Fathers of St Edmund Southern Missions Inc

Since 1937, the Edmundite Missions, a Catholic charity, has served the needs of the poor in the Deep South. We offer outreach ministries throughout Alabama and New Orleans, LA. The poverty in the areas we serve is dire and I would like to tell you about one of the many families we help each day:

 

By the time Sarah reached Sister Margaret's office she was sobbing uncontrollably. The depressed mother and her three children were dragging a large bag filled with rotting food they had dug out of a dumpster. When Sarah opened the bag to ask if the food was still edible, the stench of rotten food was unbearable.

Sister realized that Sarah's living conditions had become a danger to her family. Her three girls, Sasha, aged 4, Makaila, aged 7 and 11 year-old Amanda were malnourished and dressed in foul-smelling, ragged clothes. With no running water or heat, Sarah and her family are living in a rented shack made for workers in the boat industry in rural Alabama more than 50 years ago. When the industry collapsed and no jobs were available, most people left and moved away. Sarah didn't have that option.

With asbestos in the home and floor boards that sag and creak loudly as you walk across the living room, the house is not safe for Sarah, the girls and her husband, Davey, who is bedridden and dying of cancer. A proud mother who doesn't want to ask for help, she waited too long and now the family is in a desperate crisis. To find help, Sarah drove to Selma in a car with broken out windows and a rear view mirror that dangles on the left side. When she turns on the car, thick clouds of black smoke puff out from the exhaust pipe.

Sarah's husband Davey can't move around his home to help his wife. He spends all day and night confined to a bed in the back bedroom. The pain of cancer, the pain of watching his wife and daughters starve and the pain of not providing for them is too much for him to bear.

Sister Margaret was able to step in just in time. She replaced the spoiled, unhealthy food with hot meals for the family from the Bosco Food Kitchen.

She also provided Sarah with a big bag of canned goods and other nonperishable foods from the Edmundite Missions dwindling food pantry.

Sister also helped with the utility bills after Sarah paid the rent because she didn't have the gas to take her husband to his doctor visits. There is simply no money left over for food, clothes or school supplies and sometimes, even the medicine for her husband must be taken out of their food money.

It is bitterly cold now and the homeless -including children – are filled with a terrible sense of hunger, despair and hopelessness. Keeping loving families together and providing food for children, the working poor and sick elders is a great motivating factor for me. On days like Thanksgiving and Christmas, there would have been no turkey, no pumpkin pie, no laughter and prayers unless the Edmundite Missions brought the poor together as “family” to offer a traditional Holiday meal. Every day, 365 days a year, the Bosco Food Kitchen feeds a long line of people a healthy meal that lifts them out of hunger and despair.

The funds needed to provide nutritious meals for God's poor and homeless are higher than ever. I constantly worry about the $310 it costs daily to purchase meat and vegetables to feed over 250 people at Bosco. Every month I need $15,375 to fill 400 bags with life-saving, nutritious food for rural shut-ins.  The cost of these vital outreach missions to the poor seems to only get higher and higher. Regardless, I must find the money because I do not want any child or senior to go hungry, passed over or neglected.

- Father Richard M. Myhalyk, S.S.E.

Keywords- senior citizens, kids, unemployed families, working poor, Wilcox county, Dallas County, Lowndes County, Vredenburgh Alabama, Pine Apple Alabama, Mosses Alabama, Black Belt