“If not for the grace of God and our many volunteers, we would've closed long ago,” says Karen Ellis, who oversees Collin County's Amazing Grace Food Pantry.
Not only has the pantry remained open, but it also projects to have distributed 2.4 million pounds of food in 2024 by the end of October—more than any of the North Texas Food Bank's all-volunteer pantries in Collin County.
Equally amazing, the pantry owes its existence to a pig hunter who got busted for stalking swine on private property in Gun Barrel City.
“That pig hunter is my husband, Mike,” Ellis sheepishly admits. “It was by mistake, but he and a buddy trespassed. So, Mike made amends with 40 hours of community service at a food pantry in Mesquite.”
He then volunteered 360 more hours there and, as the associate pastor at Wylie’s then Amazing Grace Fellowship, asked his congregation to convert its unused parsonage into a food pantry.
With much support from the community, especially local grocers, Amazing Grace Food Pantry opened in June 2006.
By 2012, though, the church's membership had dwindled to 10, so Amazing Grace Fellowship closed and rented its sanctuary to another church.
However, the food pantry never missed a beat—until the rented-out church building burned to the ground in 2014.
“The soot was so thick we had to close the pantry down for a week,” Ellis says.
Then, a year later, the parsonage’s floors buckled under the weight of food pallets. By 2016, the plumbing gave out.
“I thought about walking away,” Ellis says. “But with a leap of faith and a hefty donation from Chase Oaks Church, we poured a new foundation.”
Local businesses generously donated building materials, volunteers labored tirelessly, and Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons alike coalesced to help resurrect Amazing Grace Food Pantry, which reopened in March 2018.
Today, the pantry distributes food to about 700 families each week via The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP).
The pantry also provides PAN (People and Nutrition) boxes to income-eligible seniors and discreetly feeds some 150 area schoolchildren through the North Texas Food Bank’s Food 4 Kids program, helping those who might otherwise go hungry on weekends.
“A $10 donation can feed a family of four for a month,” says Ellis, who spent the first 12 years of her life in poverty and homelessness.
“But for the grace of God, any of us may someday need assistance,” Ellis says. “Helping those in need should be our mission in life.”
Donations are needed year-round: amazinggracepantry.org