One of the most wonderful things about Allen Community College is that students have opportunities to be involved with the community around them. There are a lot of activities in town in which Allen students can take part. For example Blizzard Night  at Dairy Queen, movie nights at the local theater, or bowling night at Country Lanes are activities that the town offers students, and they look forward to getting involved in the Iola community.

The latest activity that the town has offered to help college students is the Sunday Soups at the First Presbyterian Church. This event sprang from an idea of a group of people that wanted to help people from the community who needed to get some free and good food, but the vision with this project was much bigger than that.

Eric Olson, who is a member of the church, posted the idea on his blog called “Leap of Faith.” The idea was about cooking meals on Sundays for people of the community who were hungry, people that needed food and didn’t have money, or people that just wanted to socialize and enjoy a meal with some friends or family.

As Olson said, “We are going through poverty in this town and this is something that we have suffered for some time, and we wanted to help people come here and sit with us and just enjoy good food in a good environment.”

When Olson posted the idea on his blog, a group of people immediately responded by saying that it was a great idea. They wanted to get involved in the project and they put hands to work as fast as they could. The announcement for Sunday Soups was posted in July, and on November 2 they had their first Sunday Soup.

It is noticeable how hard they worked within this fellowship to make it work so fast. It started with a group of around 18 people and now there are a lot of people that come to help with the serving of the food or just to eat. Not everybody is from the church; it is not a requirement to go to church. They just want people who need food or need company to come and enjoy the event. People from all over town can go, the only requirement is “to be hungry, as  the more hungry you are, the better it is for us,” Olson said.

The reason they chose to serve soups, Olson explained, is because “there are social classes and maybe not everybody from all social classes eat the same food, but in all classes people eat soup, and that’s what we want. We want people from all around the place to come and enjoy the moment; we want rich people, middle class people, poor people to come and share with the other people that comes here.”

This is just the beginning of this project and they plan to do it for as long as people participate and eat. They have taken some advice from other churches that have done food service for their communities for years and they would like to do the same. They even make special meals, like on Thanksgiving Day, and they are going to have a special meal in Christmas, too.

The best way to support Sunday Soups is by making a donation to the church, going to help with the serving, or just going and enjoying the event and sharing some time with the people. The Sunday Soups are every Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. Students don’t have to be a member of the church to help with the event or to enjoy the food; everyone is invited.