Church Group Feeds Residents of Slum as ‘We Saw Jesus Doing’

In a vacant lot on the edge of Buena Clinton, a rough, overcrowded slum in Garden Grove, an elderly Mexican woman stood with her head bowed as two volunteers from an Anaheim church said a prayer for her on Easter Sunday.

The woman’s daughter, Indeliz Ornelas, watched nearby. A mother of two children herself, Ornelas cradled in her arms a sack of groceries--a sort of Easter basket in a brown paper bag that was a gift from the group from Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Her widowed mother, Aristea Pio Silvas, was in line waiting for another sack.

After finishing their prayer, the volunteers asked the old woman to sign a piece of paper releasing them from any liability should there be any problems with the food.

“She can’t--she doesn’t know how,” said Ornelas in Spanish, and then quickly to her mother: “The sack, Mama, make sure they give you the sack.”

They did.

Mike Dublin, one of the pastors at the large non-denominational church, said the group of about 15 volunteers began coming to the blighted neighborhood “because it was something we saw Jesus doing--feeding the poor, helping those who don’t have it quite as good as you do.”

The church also operates a soup kitchen in Santa Ana and feeds homeless people in Garden Grove Park one morning a week.

The group made its first trip two weeks ago to the vacant lot on Clinton Street and distributed 100 sacks of groceries--some of it donated and some bought at a food bank. Police who patrol the area had told neighborhood residents last week that the group would be coming again Sunday at 2 p.m., Dublin said. “We plan to come every other Sunday--today just happens to be Easter,” he said.

As the volunteer caravan of half a dozen vehicles arrived, there was not a person in the empty lot. But within minutes, a line had formed and volunteers handed out boxes of raisins and candies to small children as their parents waited patiently for their sacks.

“This helps a lot,” said Ornelas, as she waited for her mother. “We are poor, and the things they give us (canned goods, bread, peanuts, beans and rice) are very good. I think they are good people.”

Lorenza Vasquez, with three of her five children hanging on to her dress, agreed. “We need this food,” said Vasquez, who is from the Mexican state of Zacatecas. “We have a big family. Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God) that they come and do this.”

Dublin hopes that more residents in one of Orange County’s worst slums come to trust the group. In the past, Dublin said, other charity groups have failed to show up in Buena Clinton after promising to come, and the impoverished residents are therefore a little wary of outsiders bearing gifts.

“They’re still wondering if we’re really going to show up,” he said.

But when they do, the sacks quickly disappear.