Brock Helfrich and Dylan Veeder carry a box of donated coats and winter wear into Manna House.
By David Myers
Southwest Kansas Register
This winter is going to be much warmer for dozens of people in the Dodge City area thanks to the seventh grade class at Sacred Heart Cathedral School.
The entire seventh grade student body recently collected and donated 85 coats, 35 pairs of gloves, several ear muffs, and a host of pajamas, boots and other warm winter wear to Manna House, which offers food, clothing and temporary housing to those in transition.
On a crispy November afternoon, approximately 25 students and their teacher, Becky Ginther—who organized the project—carried the items as they paraded the one block between their school and Manna House. Inside, volunteer Jean Peintner happily opened the front door to the excited students.
Each class at the school is given a stewardship project, Ginther said. For their project, the seventh graders set out large boxes asking for donations of coats and winter wear.
While Peintner was upstairs with the children, volunteer Maureen Jones was in the basement where the clothes and food items are stored, busily helping one person after another as they came to the outside basement entrance. There they would be given a box of food—one per household, each lasting about a week—or two articles of clothing. Maybe they or their family needed a room for the night and can’t afford a hotel. They can stay up to three nights at Manna House.
Manna House is not a shelter, and they don’t have the resources to offer long-term accommodations, or more than one box of food about three times per year.
"We try to keep it to three times per year because we have so many people come," Peintner said. Manna House works entirely with donated materials, or with those purchased from donated funds.
"We give as we receive," she said. "If we don’t have it, we don’t have it."
In the basement, a young couple with a baby girl sat with Jones, the husband smiling warmly as he held his child, his wife filling out the paperwork. The couple happened to be Spanish-speaking, and Jones, herself housing an Irish lilt from a childhood spent in Ireland, worked the couple through the specifics. Only having volunteered there two weeks, Jones learned of Manna House at the Stewardship Fair held recently at the cathedral in Dodge City.
Manna House, which is supported by the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe and other churches in Dodge City area, the United Way, and individual and group donations, is in need of volunteers who can offer approximately two hours per week. They also need financial donations to purchase turkeys for Thanksgiving. For more information, call Manna House at (620) 227-6707.
The seventh grade class at Sacred Heart Cathedral School in Dodge City stands outside Manna House after delivering boxes of coats and other winter wear they collected.
Manna House volunteer Maureen Jones works with a couple and their little girl who came to receive a vox of groceries that will last approximately one week. At rear is volunteer Jean Peintner, who is preparing the box of food.