In a hallway near the Food Pantry at St. Matthias' Episcopal Church, Brother Mark Jenkins gathers eight volunteers for a prayer.
It's almost 9:30 on a Thursday morning, and several people already are waiting outside the church.
In a few minutes, someone opens the door, greets the guests, takes their names and calls back to the pantry. The volunteers get busy readying bags of food and wheeling them to the visitors’ cars. Many grab some breakfast items while waiting in the church's commons area, while some who aren't as mobile wait in their vehicles.
Twice a week, the church welcomes all comers to the Food Pantry. Its need is unrelenting and, sadly, continually growing: More than 152,000 meals were distributed in 2025, a far cry from the beginning in 2012, when a few families at an area school were served.
The Rev. Gregory Bezilla, the interim rector at St. Matthias', calls the pantry "part of the connective tissue of Chesterfield [County]."
"This is the way we show the love of Christ," he said.
People representing 30 families -- 93 individuals – arrive at the church throughout this morning and early afternoon to get about a week's worth of groceries. The bags come with an encouraging word, or perhaps guidance with other life issues, a prayer or a hug.
Many of those extras come courtesy of Linda Hudgens, the pantry’s shepherd. It has become her calling in retirement, a way to give back and pay tribute to her late husband’s love for St. Matthias’.
Many of the guests seek out Hudgens. She usually is their first contact, either in person or over the phone, and she knows their stories if they choose to tell them.
Around the greetings and conversations, she meets with a Feed More representative and takes a phone call from someone who hasn't been to the pantry. Do you have any food allergies, she asks? How many people? Do you want to come now?
"When you are sitting and talking with them, their stories are incredible," Hudgens said. "What we're living through right now, to have people come here with the anxieties [about Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], to be able to provide that sense of warmth and love that we're all called to do as Christians, I know it's changed my life."
Hudgens was sitting in church early in 2012 when an opportunity came to honor her husband, Bob, a pediatrician and vestry member who died in 2010. Another church needed volunteers for its food pantry, it was announced. She called the next day and was told the church needed someone to schedule the volunteers.
She spent her career in nursing and nursing management, so that was right up her alley.
Hudgens soon realized there wasn't enough work for the volunteers. Not wanting to lose them, she approached former rector The Rev. Dr. John Boucher. If she could find some space, she asked, could St. Matthias' put together a Food Pantry?
(The church already was providing meals for several families at Clark Springs Elementary School through its work with the Micah Initiative, a partnership of faith communities with elementary schools in Richmond that encourages mentoring, tutoring and volunteering.)
Rev. Boucher agreed to Hudgens' proposal. When she found a small, unused sacristy off the sanctuary, she went to work with Ned Armstrong, Jerry Buckner and Gerry Noell cleaning it out and installing shelves in May 2012. Numerous parishioners got on board and helped the pantry take off.
Within two months, it became a partner of Feed More, which "collects, prepares and distributes food to neighbors in need throughout Central Virginia," according to its website. It has more than 380 distribution partners.
Referrals from Feed More and another organization, Connecting Communities to Hope, Access, Support, & Meals (CCHASM), quickly expanded the program. To help accommodate the growth, Katherine Martin started a vegetable garden on church grounds. The church converted a room to hold more food. A freezer was donated. Then a refrigerator.
A remodeling grant came from Feed More. Food Lion performed the work, removing a wall to create more space, installing flooring and shelving, and painting. More refrigerators and freezers eventually were added through donations and grants.
By the end of 2013, the Food Pantry provided food for 508 families. That included a few at two elementary schools -- Chalkley in Chesterfield, and Carver in Richmond. The pantry took Carver after Clark Springs closed in 2013; a counselor who had switched over to Carver requested help.
"That's when [former rector The Rev. Brenda S. Overfield] started the thing about, 'Just say yes,'" Hudgens said. "So that's my motto."
Hudgens said some people questioned whether the church could support all the growth. "Watch us," she said.
The pantry opens on Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mary Morsch, a member of the church and a teacher at nearby Greenfield Elementary in Chesterfield, said she knew of a lot of parents at the school who wanted to come to the pantry but couldn't get there during the day because of work. She proposed a second opening in the evening, and a Monday night pantry (5-7 p.m.) took shape in 2015.
Morsch ran it, sometimes with just her son helping in the early going.
Hudgens said the Monday pantry now is "probably as big” as the Thursday pantry.
The operation fed 780 families in 2018. The number swelled to 2,050 (3,651 adults, 3,838 children) in 2025.
"I never dreamed it would morph into this," Hudgens said. "[My husband] was my guiding force for sure. I think he’d be pleased with this.”
Wendy Ellis asked two questions when she and her husband, Ed, were considering joining St. Matthias': Will you marry LGBTQ+ people, and do you have outreach programs?
Rev. Overfield said yes to both -- and had Hudgens show Ellis the Food Pantry.
"I said, OK, when I retire, this is the first thing I'm going to do, volunteer in the Food Pantry," she said.
Ellis was the associate director at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in Richmond. The school did some outreach with Carver, so she had a special place in her heart for the children there.
She usually prepacks food on Wednesdays for Carver's families.
"I really do feel humbled," Ellis said. "I learn much more from people that I meet. I feel like I'm being blessed really more than they are, just hearing their stories and knowing that they're humans just like I am. They just have other circumstances."
Ellis is one of about 70 volunteers at the pantry, some of whom come from outside the church membership. Along with greeters, runners and packers (including those who prepack on other days of the week), there are drivers who deliver food to elementary schools and drivers who pick up donated food from partners, along with shoppers, pantry organizers and team leaders.
Hudgens, Pat Wing, Sharon Bishop and Ellen Whitehead form the Steering Committee that oversees everything.
Bishop's husband, Earl, picks up donated food from local stores and fills in for other needs.
"Going through Kroger and going through Wegmans, just stopping to talk to people, they're so willing to do things," he said. "And that always makes me feel good."
When he arrived as the interim rector in May 2025, Rev. Bezilla said he was struck by the amount of volunteers. The pantry is a way of “making concrete the Gospel,” he said, and forming a deeper connection with the community.
St. Matthias' receives (or has received) food and monetary donations from a variety of generous sources: Kroger, Wegmans, Wawa and Chick fil-A; its church members; Salisbury Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, and Christ the King Lutheran Church; Queenspark Community Association; Newberry Towne Association; Napier Realtors; SoulShine Studios; FC Richmond soccer; Sassy Bee; Christian Brothers Automotive; Professional Risk Associates; and Robious Middle School in Chesterfield.
Publix provided turkeys at a reduced price for Thanksgiving.
Salisbury Presbyterian has been providing “a humongous amount of vegetables” from its garden since the garden at St. Matthias’ went dormant after Martin moved.
Most of the shopping budget comes from pledges of St. Matthias' members. There also are grants and donations -- and surprises.
Griffin Phillips, a 10th-grader in Harrisonburg who founded Virginia Air Feed, wanted to do something to help during COVID in 2020 and couple it with working on his pilot's license.
So Phillips raised money at his church and bought food. With his flight instructor in tow, he flew the food to other communities.
"He somehow picked up our phone number and called," Hudgens said. " ...And I find out he's 16, doesn't have his driver's license yet.
"So he comes with 450 pounds of food on a Cessna. I just couldn't believe it. 'You're so young and you're doing this.' And he says, 'Well, there are people who are hungry, and I wanted to do something so I could fly it somewhere.'
"We had I think three pickup trucks. ... It was amazing. This is how God works."
Hudgens said food from stores can vary. One can give 200 pounds of meat one week and have nothing the next. Shopping at Feed More may fill the gap.
In addition to meat, grocery bags may include items such as breakfast cereal, peanut butter and jelly, tuna, soup, macaroni and cheese, canned fruit, crackers, spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, rice, pasta, potatoes, stuffing, canned vegetables, canned beans, bread and cookies.
There's enough included for each family member to have three meals a day for about a week. Families can come twice a month. The pantry requests guests call 24 hours in advance so most of the food can be prepacked, but walk-ins are welcome.
The pantry's impact is reflected in the numbers – meals served increased by 35 percent in 2025 vs. 2024 -- and the notes tacked on a pantry wall.
"Linda & Food Pantry Volunteers," one reads. "Thank you all for providing food for us, and meeting this large void in our family finances."
One guest has become a volunteer. "This program and church has saved me. I feel loved and have a purpose,” the person wrote in a note to Rev. Bezilla.
During a meeting of volunteers, Rev. Bezilla said people talked about exploring ways for the church to do more than just provide food. With limited resources, he and Brother Mark, the parish administrator and director of operations, do what they can by sometimes helping guests with other issues -- or just by praying with them.
Hudgens said one woman came to the pantry not long after one of her sons had been killed. Rev. Bezilla met with the woman and another son in the church commons, held hands with them and prayed.
He was about to leave the church another day when another woman came in who was struggling with her knees. Rev. Bezilla put his briefcase down, got on his knees and prayed for her.
"One's heart breaks when one hears the stories of what people have gone through and are living with, their challenges and struggles," he said. "It's not just that their refrigerator is empty or their pantry shelves are bare. Very often there are other challenges and needs in their life. It touches my heart to hear these things. I think … we recognize our own vulnerability in the things that people go through."
The evolution of the pantry, Hudgens said, "tells me that we are fulfilling what we're called to do." And yet she says only God has the answer to its future and whether it can expand.
As need increases, so does the demand for more food, money and volunteers.
"We have seen so many things in this pantry that will touch you," Hudgens said. "If you don't have faith when you start out with the pantry, you will surely have it before you are done.
"Every time we have felt like we can't function another day, there's not enough food, what are we going to do, something happens. Either we get a big grant of money, or we get a big donation of food, or something happens that fills up the pantry again. It's like this is just a gift from God and it tells me we are doing God's work here. You have to believe that God is good all the time, every day. It just empowers you to share that faith with the people who come in here.”
To help or for information on the Food Pantry and other outreach programs at St. Matthias' Episcopal Church (11300 W. Huguenot Road in Midlothian, Va.), call (804) 464-1842 or go to www.stmatmidlo.com.