God is Deeply in Love with Us!
Sunday Suppers was originally started in 2010 as our parish's effort to support the Kimberly community after the paper mill closed. At that time, Holy Angels and Holy Name parishes had recently merged, and we had a vacant school in Kimberly.
We decided to use our parish's organizational skills in putting on church picnics and fish fries toward an outreach program for the community.
The entire program, then and now, is run outside the parish's budget. We started with a $500 grant from the Catholic Foundation of the Diocese of Green Bay and solicited sponsors in the community and parish for support.
Our first Sunday Supper took place in September of 2010. We had 13 guests. We doubled our marketing efforts and grew the program to around 100 guests monthly at the Kimberly site.
In 2014, the program was moved to the Darboy location after the former Holy Name school was leased to the Kimberly Area School District.
In 2016, we received a renewable grant from US Ventures which allowed us to double the number of Sunday Suppers to two per month from September through May. Since then we have seen the number of guests increase to 250 at each Sunday Supper!
With the support of donations and attentive cost management, the cost per meal averages about $2.50.
We have never had an issue finding financial sponsors who include parish families and local businesses and civic organizations.
Volunteers tend to come from within the parish, but also regularly include various service organizations and scout groups.
We never as for contributions from our guests in any way.
The majority of guests are senior citizens on fixed incomes.
However, a significant clientele includes families with children who are developmentally disabled in some way. Those families may find our venue more comfortable than a public restaurant.
We also serve people experiencing homelessness at each of our meals.
We would like to think we offer a hospitable environment that reflects Christ's love.
We take a few minutes to minister in His name through group prayer before the meal.
We also solicit individual prayer requests to bring back to our parish community.
--Andrew Reimer