First Baptist Church of Cherokee - Compassion Outreach Ministry

The ground work for this ministry was started in March of 2011. We began by picking a room in the church for the food pantry and built shelves. After some hard work we had a stocked pantry and had our first distribution on April 16th, 2011. We started off servicing just five families. Little did we know that despite our plans to grow this ministry slowly, God had a different plan for us. The F5 Tornadoes hit Alabama just a little over a week later on April 27th, 2011. Our church quickly became a drop off site for donations for the tornado victims and we kicked into action. We began helping families by taking them clothes and personal hygiene items, working hands-on in clean up, serving food, taking food and other needed items to areas that need them, setting up a church for the use of a school, praying and loving all of those we came in contact with. It changed our hearts forever and our ministry! When the donations quit coming in we knew we had no choice but to start a clothes closet. God had placed all of these donations in our hands and we were to use them. So we began a search again for a room and after some more hard work the rods were up and filled with clothes ranging in size from infant to adult. But within a few months we had outgrown the clothes closet and had to expand into the next room. We now store household items, shoes, toys, sheets, dishes, furniture, anything that could be used to put a house back together and a family on their feet after a disaster such as a tornado or house fire. We have distributions every third Saturday of each month from 9am to 11am. We continue to grow the number of families we service monthly and pray that God will continue to grow us to His limits not ours!