Alabama: Church in Huntsville Gives Over 300 Grocery Gift Cards to Furloughed Federal Workers

The First Baptist Church of Huntsville’s gifts were part of a wider community-led effort to help furloughed workers in Alabama’s third-largest city, which is home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.

Church Gave from Disaster Relief Fund

First Baptist’s senior pastor, Travis Collins, told HuffPost that the church emptied out its disaster relief fund ― which held $14,000 ― and collected an additional $2,500 from its members to help fund the charity effort. The church purchased over 300 Publix gift cards from a local grocery store in $50 increments.

Within 30 minutes of opening the church’s doors on Thursday, all the gift cards were gone, Collins said.  The pastor said he was moved by how many people had lined up that morning at his church to receive the cards.

In Alabama, nearly 40,000 federal employees have been affected by the shutdown, The Washington Post reports. |   See the full story here… huffingtonpost.com

 

• “Our only regret is that we didn’t designate more money,” Pastor Collins said. “We had no idea how big the response would be.”

 

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