A Winnipeg soup and sandwich kitchen is letting people know that anyone with excess vegetables from their garden can bring them to the mission. 

"We can use all types of garden vegetables. It's that time of year when people are starting to harvest their gardens and realizing a particular item is producing really well. We can turn pretty much anything into soup, or throw it into chilli," says Beverly Ajtay is the Operations Manager at Lighthouse Mission.

Lighthouse Mission is located at 669 Main street in Winnipeg and to make sure they're adhering to social distancing guidelines, they serve meals-to-go right outside their doors. 

"In the month of July, we served roughly 3,700 meals each week. Right now on average we see about 250 breakfasts and 400 lunches," says Atjay.

The number of people coming by the mission has increased since COVID-19 started shutting things down back in March. 

"We are seeing new faces and I don't know if that's because more people are needing our services or if, because we're right out on the street, people don't feel as self-conscious."

The mission serves sandwiches, cups of soup, and bagged lunches. One day a week they serve dinner to roughly 300 people, due to their dining room being closed since the pandemic. 

For anyone who wants to give vegetables from their garden, Atjay says, "The best thing is if they call the mission and make arrangements to drop them off."

Anyone interested can call Lighthouse Mission at 204-943-9669.

"Produce we can freeze and fill our freezers with so that come wintertime, when produce is a little harder to come by, we still have some that we can thaw and throw into soups and chilli."

Local tomatoes later made into soup. One of the local volunteers, Shaun, with some donated tomatoes he later made into soup. (Supplied)

As a Christian organization, they strive to feed people physically and spiritually.

Atjay says, "We are loving our community, still praying with people, ministering to people, and sharing the love of Christ with them."

Garden Harvests are in full swing and we want to remind you that we accept produce donations. This is the time of year...

Posted by Lighthouse Mission on Thursday, August 6, 2020
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