RESCUING FRUIT?

I've heard of animals such as dogs, cats, and rabbits being rescued but never have I heard about anybody rescuing fruit. This sounds strange but it makes sense once you know the story behind what I discovered at Edmonton's K-Days exhibition last month.

As I strolled among the various booths in the exhibition hall, I noticed a young woman and an elderly man behind two tables laden with jars. When I asked what was in those, the woman said they were jams made from fruit which was abandoned on the trees of urban lots.

The woman explained to me about how she saw fruit going to waste in her Edmonton neighbourhood of Sherbrooke and decided to organize ways to get it to people who would appreciate it.

Fruits of Sherbrooke also teaches courses on how to preserve fruit for winter. To the poor, these lessons are offered for free while they charge a small fee for other interested groups.


Additionally, fruit which is wormy or not up to the standards of human consumption is given to farmers as animal feed. This helps eliminate needless waste of good food and reuses spoiled fruit.

If you'd like to learn more about this unique project, visit the Fruits of Sherbrooke web site. You also may call them at 1-780-244-0129. I'm sure you'll be amazed at the amount and variety of fruit reclaimed by these industrious people.

It's too bad nobody was doing this in 1978 when I was desperately poor. During that spring, my unemployment insurance had become messed up due to bad advice I took from a church friend. I had to go begging bread from Hope Mission and receiving meals from them until I found a job a month later. Had I been able to have some fresh jam to put on the bread, instead of twenty-one-year-old mystery jam which the church gave me, I would have appreciated that even more.

I wrote about that house church and how God straightened out my beliefs afterward in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers for more info on this testimony of the heavenly Father's providential guidence.