The Opera Singer’s Surprise

By Maureen McNair
Not long ago, I received an email from someone identifying himself only as an opera singer. The opera singer was offering to donate 85 pounds of food to the pantry from a food drive. Could I drive into San Diego to pick it up?
​I agree to pick up the donation, but since I did not know the donor, I asked another pantry volunteer to come with me. So one Saturday after a long day of preparing for the food distribution and handing out food, we drove to our meeting place.

It turns out our two cars were not quite large enough to hold the food donation. 
The opera singer turned out to be a member of a Masonic Lodge. He had collected so much food that it took a caravan of seven cars fully loaded to transport all the food back to our pantry.
We weighed all the boxes and bags. The 85 pound donation actually totaled 2,043 lbs of food! We received lots of canned goods, oatmeal, peanut butter, and other kinds of shelf stable food. 
We’ve been bagging it all and distributing it to our food pantry clients and church families — about 150 families or 600 individuals each week.
Quite a bit of the canned food had pop top lids. So a dynamic family of pantry volunteers, who wish to remain anonymous, have sorted out the pop top cans and created a shelf of food from which we pack the bags we give to people experiencing homelessness.
​It was a great and generous donation — one that put a song in our hearts! Thank you too for your continued support!