Church packs in charity
With the start of the new school year just around the corner,
13-year-old Erika Octaviano held a brightly colored new backpack she
picked up from a local church that distributed school supplies to
families.
“I think it’s pretty cool that they’re giving backpacks and food,”
Erika, who lives in Santa Ana, said. “There are a lot of people
happy.”
At a time of year when many families participate in the annual
ritual of back-to-school shopping, hundreds who could not afford a
shopping spree visited the Christian Outreach Center in Costa Mesa
Saturday to pick up school supplies and groceries for their families.
The Christian Outreach Center is a bilingual church led by the
husband-and-wife team of pastors Lou and Aida Torres. Lou Torres said
the church distributed food and backpacks filled with school supplies
to 260 families.
“Some of the kids feel ashamed not having anything to go back to
school with, so the parents come out in droves,” Aida Torres said.
Charitable activities are essential to the church’s mission, the
pastors said. Lou Torres said the church gives food once a month to
families in Costa Mesa and nearby cities, including Santa Ana,
Westminster and Anaheim.
Christian Outreach Center has been housed in a Harbor Boulevard
business complex for about two years, Aida Torres said. The
sanctuary’s walls are decorated with the flags of many nations,
including Israel, South Vietnam and several Latin American countries.
Saturday’s event was religious as well as charitable. Lou Torres
delivered a spiritual message before volunteers gave school supplies
and groceries to the families. Speaking in Spanish, the families
repeated Torres’ words as he offered a prayer of thanks to God.
The nondenominational church’s current languages are English and
Spanish, and Aida Torres said she would be glad to see her church
have a trilingual congregation if people speaking another language
wanted to attend services.
After Lou Torres’ message, the families collected the goods.
Families walked away from the church carrying backpacks and bags
filled with foods such as yogurt, squash and peppers.
Church member and volunteer Rosie Jordan helped coordinate the
lines and also worked at a face-painting booth.
“It was very hard because there were a lot of kids all over the
place,” Jordan said. “It was very fun. It was great because we got to
help a lot of people who didn’t have food.”
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