Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Kornelius Allen, 7, center, reaches for a sack lunch Wednesday afternoon from Sheila Morahnwanna-Gilbert at Heaven’s Road Church. Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert and her husband, Kenziue Gilbert, started Food for Kids. The couple hand out lunches every day.

It’s nothing fancy. It doesn’t have to be to serve a need.

Just a large plastic tote full of bagged cold lunches sitting under an umbrella on a donated wooden table. An inflatable kid’s swimming pool full of ice to keep the juice drinks cold. A kind word.

Hungry children in Midtown know they will get fed here as soon as the green pickup pulls up here every weekday morning on the site of the Heaven’s Road Church.

“They see us and they come running,” Sheila Morahnwanna-Gilbert said. “It’s like we’re the Popsicle man or something,”

She and her husband, Kenziue “Kenzie” Gilbert, started the Food for Kids ministry from a burden on their hearts. The transplanted Houston couple saw child hunger up close and right next to their pickup window a few months ago.

“Some kids came up on the side of me one day when I was in the truck eating lunch, and they asked for some food. I didn’t see any adults accompanying them, and I shared it with them,” Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert said.

“She gave them a banana and they broke the banana in five parts, and that touched her heart and made her cry,” Mr. Gilbert added. “She said: ‘We got to do something about this. These are not the only children that’s hungry.’”

With money from their own pockets, Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert, a home health care provider working on her barber’s license, and Mr. Gilbert, a self-contracted carpenter, opened up the food stand at 19th and Angelique streets June 30. Before long, they were handing out more than 120 free lunches a day to children, sometimes more. They soon had to begin asking for donations.

“I just wrote up a flier and went to different churches and businesses and asked them for donations, and God’s been doing the rest,” Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert said.

In each lunch, she tries to give the kids a fruit, sandwich, cookies and popcorn. There’s also a box full of donated toys, one for each child.

This past Wednesday morning, a ham-and-cheese sandwich was on the menu. And candy.

Terenity Shockley, her brother Israel and friend Christopher Schofield got in line early before the 11 a.m. crowd.

“I like this because they give us nutritious stuff, not like junk food,” 11-year-old Israel said while swishing through the icy pool for a drink.

Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Kenziue Gilbert hands out drinks to children Wednesday afternoon at Heaven’s Road Church.

Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert said she and her husband will continue to operate the Food for Kids stand through Aug. 21, right before school starts. Children get fed at school. It’s the summer months where they struggle, she said.

Mr. Gilbert said they hope to raise enough funds for next summer’s Food for Kids program. They also hope to find a building next year.

“So we won’t have to jump up on the spur of the moment and try to hustle donations,” he said. “We’ll have it already put back.”

“In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be doing this,” Mrs. Morahnwanna-Gilbert said. “But anything that gets the kids over the hump, gets the wrinkles out their stomachs for a minute, I do.”

For more information or to donate to the Food for Kids ministry, call 364-5809.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.