Project Tuna Casserole

Each week I go to the  Place of Peace (PoP) meal done by Evergreen Community Initiatives (ECI) and about every three months Tapestry provides the meal for the week. If you aren’t familiar with the Place of Peace, it is a meal that it is open to everyone that was started by the Catholic Workers Movement house (CWM) in Stevens Point. When the Point area CWM group disbanded ECI jumped in to lead PoP meals. Since it is an open meal it involves all sorts of people from all sorts of groups. The PoP meals are wonderful and I, my family, and a tons of “threads” love being a part of them.

Around 5 months ago Tiffani (the leader of ECI) asked if I would start coming by weekly because she wanted a pastor to be there to pray with people. Back when ECI was connected with Evergreen Church, the pastor of Evergreen, Al Kinnunen (an all around great guy) was there each week for this purpose. Since Al and his family left the country to do God’s work elsewhere and Evergreen Church sadly stopped existing long after he was gone there hasn’t been a pastor necessarily around each week. So Tiffani, knowing that I love PoP, asked if I would come around to pray with anyone who wants prayer. Therefore, most Thursday nights I am there talking with and praying with whoever wants to talk or pray.

That’s how I learned about the desire of a few guys for tuna casserole.

There are a group of guys with some communication and developmental issues who believe that tuna casserole is the greatest thing ever. Each week while the food is getting ready and I am about to pray over the meal, one of them sends a aides up to me to ask if it is tuna casserole. Seriously this has gone on for weeks. Personally I can think of very few things in this world as disgusting as tuna casserole. Blah! But these guys desperately want tuna casserole.

Sarah L has already sent me this photo of cookies her students made for the PoP meal next week.

It is Tapestry‘s turn to bring the meal next week. Now as a church we are known as the jambalaya church. I usually make a huge pot of jambalaya and the rest of the threads bring other wonderful things. Homemade bread, lots of fruit, salads, vegan friendly options, lots of things. Since I am there pretty much every week to pray I know that we are bringing something different and something that is looked forward too, because I get asked regularly when the next time is that we are bringing the jambalaya. Most of the people at the PoP meal aren’t wanting tuna casserole and therefore we aren’t going to bring a lot of tuna casserole. But there are about three guys there who are desperate for tuna casserole and I plan on making sure they receive it.

We already have a thread who has volunteered to make the casserole for these guys. She’s never made tuna casserole before and personally I’m pretty sure there is no way you can ruin this dish because, in my opinion, it is already pretty nasty.  😜 All I know is that I am looking forward to the brief moment when then guys send one of their aides up to ask me if it is tuna casserole and I get to look at them as say “Yes! It is tuna casserole!”

Then I will quickly walk away from the smell of that plate.