Vineyard Church, Navigating Recovery team up to provide for those in need

LACONIA — For decades, Pastor Richard “Dick” AuCoin operated a food pantry first out of his basement. Now the pantry is run out of Lakes Region Vineyard Church in Lakeport. This year, the church partnered with Navigating Recovery to provide essential items to the city's unhoused population. On Thursday, volunteers assembled at the church to pick up the donated items and deliver them to their new owners.

AuCoin and a pair of his parishioners were seen sorting freshly purchased winter clothing items for easy transport by representatives from Navigating Recovery.

“For the past year and half we’ve been trying to work with the community to help people experiencing homelessness,” said Mike Gallagher, a peer supervisor with Navigating Recovery who arrived to pick up the donations. “We’ve tried to partner with different community organizations to support us with that effort.”

One of those pivotal organizations is the Lakes Region Vineyard Church, which began the partnership thanks to Asheena Miller, who was then working at Navigating Recovery. Miller has since moved on to a position at the Community Action Program.

“Asheena started this with Pastor Dick for Thanksgiving,” recalled volunteer Natalie Fortier. “We received quite a few bags to hand out for Thanksgiving. Pastor Dick and I have been working together for this event.”

Miller "called me and asked if we had any personal need items at the pantry,” recalled AuCoin. “I said 'give me a list of men's items and women's items and I'll put it out to the church and people will buy gift bags. It will be a great Thanksgiving project.'”

Volunteers went to various homeless communities and collected a list of personal and hygiene item requests.

“We ended up doing 26 women and 26 men,” AuCoin said. “On that list originally one of the items was underwear.”

That one request helped spark the second wave of donations Thursday.

Buying underwear is "difficult, because there’s a 1,000 different sizes and styles,” AuCoin explained. “I said, ‘When you deliver, talk to individuals about what they might need in clothing and you make a list.'”

On Thursday, those specific requests, along with all the right sizes, were fulfilled.

“We were able to see folks either in encampments or out in the streets and write up a wish list,” Gallagher said. “We were able to work with the church to be able to provide one of the primary needs for them to stay warm outside.”

Donated items included gloves, hats, long johns, hoodies and other cold weather essentials that can make all the difference to a person living out on the streets.

“It went from personal needs to finding another need and approaching that,” AuCoin said. “We do stuff like this every year at some level in the background.”

The ramifications of those background acts are making an impact from the Lakes Region to the Middle East.

“We adopted a family locally with three kids this year that would not have had a Christmas otherwise,” AuCoin said, describing a donation effort to a school for deaf and blind children in Jordan through a former mission connection.

“We did a little collection and came up with the money to get them all they needed; some warm blankets, clothing,” AuCoin said. “Today was the first day [the school's director] delivered to the first 10 families."