Fishes, Loaves and Pierogi

Food brings people together on many different levels. It’s nourishment of the soul and body; it’s truly love.

Giada De Laurentiis

When I was approached by my friend at church about wanting to make pierogi, I was totally on board. Food? Check. Getting together with friends? Double check. My creative brain started thinking of how we can get others involved at our church, too. We originally thought let’s open this to the congregation and whoever is interested will come. Remember the movie with Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams? Build it and they will come. Well, that was our thought as well. We will open the opportunity to get together after church services and make something with our own hands. We can turn it into a prayerful fellowship! Or perhaps we can serve them during our Palm Sunday celebration to everyone! The ideas just kept flowing. The question was, can a handful of willing people make this a success?

The answer is, of course we can! In fact, the ironic part of this whole endeavor is that none of us are of Polish descent, where pierogi are a staple food. In fact, some of us are German, Italian, Swedish and Colombian. What do you end up with all those backgrounds coming together to make a dish most of us have enjoyed in one way or another? The results are quite amazing, frankly. We all brought our talents and gifts together and made some fantastic little pockets of yumminess! We worked as a team. We laughed and joked around. We experimented with different methods that worked for us and we really had a wonderful time in the process.

Food. Fellowship. Faith. We started out with the the focus to make a bunch of pierogi and share them, but our end results are so much more than a delicious little treat. We continue to build our personal bonds with one another and we learned some new skills along the way. The biggest reward is knowing that God has played an important part in orchestrating our fellowship.

During one of the church services this month, one of our lay leaders spoke about the Fishes and Loaves and shared an interesting take on how artists have depicted this most popular story and sign of Jesus during his ministry. As I was listening to him speak, it occurred to me that our little pierogi venture started out small, just like the five loaves and fishes, and blossomed into so much more. We kept setting goals, changing our direction and determining what we could do with our new found gift of pierogi making.

We decided not only to sell them to the congregation, but to utilize the money we made to purchase something for our bell choir. This small idea from a friend who said, “Elisa, do you want to get together and make pierogi?” grew into an actual fundraiser! Who would have thought a simple idea could become a tremendous blessing!

By the way, that lay leader I mentioned really is the pivotal force behind this whole thing, whether he realizes it or not. He had shared a picture of a dish of pierogi when he was traveling to Poland earlier in the year to my friend and that’s when she decided she wanted to try making them.

We are still in the midst of making and selling, so I can’t share what our final outcome has been just yet. But, if I may speculate, I have a good feeling that we will reach our goal and be able to purchase what we need in order to make our bell choir space even better. And not only that, our little pierogi making crew has also grown together even more and we have all come out of this with happier hearts as a result.

After being part of this experience, I can see why food can be the one thing that brings many together, but it is our willingness to open our hearts and minds to receive a greater gift…love, fellowship and faith. And maybe add some pierogi, too. 😉

Do you have a story to share how food and fellowship brings you closer to your faith and family? Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you!