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We outgrew our old facility. It will be great to have a facility of our own.
HARLINGEN — Stacks of canned corn and tomato sauce stand in one corner.
On the other side of the garage that has served as the Harlingen Neighborhood Food Pantry for more than three years, frozen chickens, pork and ground beef hibernate in freezers.
Food from HEB, Wal-Mart, schools and concerned citizens will soon fill the pantry behind the Church of Christ at 8th and Harrison, and it’s a tight fit that still can’t serve everyone in the community.
Soon, however, that will change.
An impressive piece of property directly behind the garage-turned-pantry will house a sprawling 5,000-square-foot building to accommodate copious amounts of food to feed everyone in need.
This thanks to a $260,055 grant from the Valley Baptist Legacy Foundation.
“This is a blessing to us here moving forward,” said Wende Coffman, a member of the board of directors.
“We outgrew our old facility,” Coffman said. “It will be great to have a facility of our own.”
The significance of a new building, however, is much greater than just “the new building.”
The food pantry, explained Director Jim Coffman (Wende’s husband), had used the fellowship hall at the Church of Christ since 2013. Stories abound over the proceeding years of people with tired faces, relieved eyes and battered clothing standing in line across the parking lot waiting to enter the hall for breads, soups and frozen meats in the raw South Texas winter.
It was a hard time for so many, but the food pantry could feed everyone who came.
And then COVID happened. Everything stopped. All manner of buildings, businesses, churches and restaurants shut down. People couldn’t move in or out, and churches didn’t have services.
But people were still hungry, and the food pantry had to maintain its essential function, so it was moved from the fellowship hall of the Church of Christ to the garage out back. It served a purpose to some degree, but not enough. The Coffmans and their volunteers have had to turn away consistently about 15 to 20 people each Wednesday.
“It’s heart-wrenching because I know they are hungry,” said Jim Coffman, looking around at the tiny structure with its shopping carts waiting with a look of desolation, as if the frustrations and sorrows of needs and shortages had embedded themselves in the metal.
“We didn’t have enough food to distribute,” he said, “because there wasn’t enough room.”
He considered now the resurrection of a more bountiful harvest and hope for those in need. The tiny garage diminished even further against the backdrop of the property directly behind, spreading from one street to the other, all of which will house the facility.
“It’s not a blessing to us as it will be to the people that use the pantry,” he said.
A groundbreaking ceremony will be held in the near future. No dates have been set as of yet for completion of the project. Everyone knows, though, that better times are coming.
