Author Archives: raha1

REFLECTIONS

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Today was a GREAT DAY, as I served today I keep remembering how Manna started and all the people that served.
So many. Seria Rasheed suggested we serve the people living on the streets of Cuyahoga County. Our first meal was January 13, 1996. We only prepared 100 dinners. My brother Anthony, Seria and others delivered the dinners. As we was preparing dinners to pass out in the neighborhood we get a call on a land line. Melvin, we ran out of dinners in a matter of minutes. So we made more.

It was overwhelming to see so many people living on the streets of downtown Cleveland. We had prepared 100 dinners. Then we decided to do more and added another weekend to our feeding. After the first month we were told about the other shelters at 18th Street, Davenport and Salvation Army P.A.S.S (Pickup Assist Shelter Services) all of them for men. We soon learned of the women’s shelters at 30th Euclid and 22nd Payne. The smell and condition of all except P.A.S.S was beyond belief that human beings had to live like this. For the next four years we cooked and delivered dinners from Mt. Gillion Baptist Church.

Names that comes to my mind now after more that 25 years. . Ruby Hughley. Bro. David Sims, Sis. Eleanor Lett, Sis. Mattie Canidate, Sis. Ruby Brumfield , Harriet Byrd, Sis Shirley Sealey, The Hodge Clan Debra, Elijah, Nicole, Jammelle, Melvin III, Taliba E.J.TEE, Jahmal and Na’Kyla. The beginning.

Annette Charles, she joined Manna by way of The Word Church Outreach Ministry. Deacon Ebony was instrumental in getting so many to volunteer. Sisters Janice Ice, Mother Cleo, Joyce Puryear, Jennifer, D.J. Donte’ Gibbs and their crews. Many more some members of The Word.

,Stephen (Steve) Sturgis and Anton Walton for more than five years had my back. Now Monica Fitzgerald and Avery L. Cook has stepped up to ensure MANNA keep supplying a healthy hot meal. If I left your name out blame my head not my heart.

Since 2018 my church supported Manna with a Van, donations and people.

My thought as I was at Bishop Willam M. Cosgrove center, they do GOOD WORKS.

Welcome

Featured

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Manna Food

The homeless ministry started out as a mission project for the Mount Gillion Baptist Church youth department in December of 1992 where Deacon Melvin Hodge and Brother David Sims served as supervisors. We would provide a holiday dinner along with gifts and toys to the Zelma George homeless shelter and as time passed we expanded our efforts to two more women and children shelters.

Over 20 years later, we are still serving

Plain Dealer Melvin Hodge

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Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer

Melvin Hodge, in the kitchen of the Lakeside homeless shelter, says a smile is the best reward he gets for the dinners he prepares.
Praise the Lord and pass the fried chicken.

It works for Melvin Hodge, co-founder of Manna Food from Heaven Ministries, who cooks this specialty for a down-home dinner every second and fourth Saturday for residents of the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry’s men’s shelter at 2100 Lakeside Avenue.
It also works for some 37,000 people who enjoyed these dinners last year at Lakeside Avenue and other area shelters, and affectionately dub Hodge’s effort “the chicken church.”
Volunteers from area churches and community groups help Hodge prepare and distribute the dinner which, by popular demand, has remained unchanged for the past 10 years, including green beans with white potatoes, collard greens, steamed cabbage, corn bread, yams and “manna” (banana) pudding. And, of course the featured entree, fried — not baked, boiled, broiled or barbecued — chicken. Upwards of 800 pounds per meal, all given the personal Hodge touch because as he says, not bragging of course, “I am the cook.”


Food to make a difference in the physical and spiritual health of the homeless and downtrodden has been his goal even before he helped start the Manna Food from Heaven Ministries in 1992. It has served more than 200,000 hot meals since then. The dinners and monthly breakfasts are both provisioned by the Cleveland Foodbank.
“It’s something that God has instilled in me,” said Hodge, 55, of Cleveland Heights. Recently retired after a 30-year Postal Service career, he is also a deacon at The Word Church in Cleveland.
“It’s funny what a little fried chicken can do,” he added. “You never know what you can mean to somebody.” And Hodge means a lot to folks who use the Lakeside Avenue shelter, according to Mike Moguel, director of operations.


Beyond the fried chicken, which always tends to draw more diners than usual, Hodge has “a huge effect,” Moguel said. “There’s a direct correlation between his work, providing a little spiritual happiness with a full stomach, and some of the transitioning out of the shelter for guys he works with individually. He reflects God’s warmth,” he added. “The people who’ve been forgotten or turned their backs on society, he welcomes with as much love as anybody I’ve seen.”

Lydia Bailey, shelter coordinator, credited Hodge’s “ebullient” nature with winning residents over. “Men at the shelter have a sixth sense as to who to trust, and Melvin is just so genuine — they see someone so upbeat, really wanting to be there — they know he’s caring people.”
To Hodge, a single thank-you, just one smile, is enough reward to keep him coming back. And he credits the help of volunteers, notably including his wife of 36 years, Debra, and four children.
Someday he would like to have his own place “where I can cook any time I want to, and have the doors open so whoever’s hungry can just walk in and get a meal.”
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“Forget not to show LOVE unto Strangers: for thereby some have entertained ANGELS unwares”
Hebrews 13:2