Approximately 500 loaves of bread are used for Sydenstricker United Methodist Church's sandwich day on the first Wednesday of every month. The bread is donated by local bread companies and stores like Giant. Photo by Thomas Kendziora/The Connection
When dozens of volunteers showed up at the Sydenstricker United Methodist Church cafeteria on Wednesday morning, they were surrounded by some 500 loaves of bread, 80 pounds of cheese and scattered tubs of ham and a homemade peanut butter and jelly blend.
Two hours later, the room was empty, and roughly 4,000 sandwiches were on their way to the homeless in Washington, D.C.
The sandwiches are first donated to Martha’s Table, which distributes them in vans throughout the district. This mission partnership has been going for over three decades, and it continues to grow.
When the project started, 250 sandwiches was considered a good day, longtime volunteer Rob Shafer said. That number is nearly 20 times larger now, and with the group convening once a month, the donation total for 2016 nearly eclipsed 50,000 sandwiches.
“It’s grown as I’ve learned more and more about it, and being able to see where the sandwiches go and who the people are that are being fed, it makes it that much more exciting,” senior pastor Don Jamison said.
The current group is led by Mike Robertson, who’s been involved for roughly a decade. All he did was open bread at first, but now he’s in charge of getting everything ready for Wednesday; this involves roughly three hours of preparation on Tuesday before everyone comes together.
“[My favorite part is] the challenge of having everything ready for Wednesday morning, getting enough bread and enough meat and enough supplies to sustain this for two or three hours,” Robertson said.
The 40 or 50 volunteers on hand are there for a variety of reasons—religious, social, moral, etc. But everyone who shows up on the first Wednesday of each month is ready to make an impact.
“A lot of times, groups like this don’t get the attention … but it’s small groups like this that make a difference,” volunteer Mary Susan Searlin said.