What does ten thousand pounds look like to you? Four or five cars? An elephant, or maybe two? The amount of food collected for a food bank in a single day by a dedicated group of Christ-followers?

Until recently, I would have said number one or maybe number two (although I didn't actually know how much an elephant weighs) but certainly not number three. I now stand corrected.

Rosewood Park Alliance Church in Regina, Saskatchewan recently experienced an overwhelming outpouring of generosity in response to its food drive for the Regina Food Bank. A little more than 10,000 pounds of food was collected.

The food drive started as a vision amongst the Rosewood staff and leaders. The church had been working on the 40 Days of Community program and they saw the food drive as a way for the entire church to reach out into the community at the conclusion of this program.

Over the last several years, Rosewood has been working at building bridges into its surrounding communities in Northwest Regina. Jesus told the Church to go into the world and to teach, evangelize and help those in need (see Matthew 25 and 28).

With this food drive, the church hoped to partner with the community and to spearhead another new way to help those who needed it the most.

Rosewood Park, through various avenues, has been opening its doors and hearts to members of the Northwest Regina community for a number of years. It is their deep desire to provide services the community needs, as well as wants, and not simply services those in the church believe they should want.

For example, the church promotes the Alpha Marriage Course within the same community of 20,000 homes canvassed for the food drive. Couples who want a strong and healthy loving relationship are invited to attend.

An intimate dinner setting is provided, as is course material applicable to any level of marriage relationship. Dozens of couples, including many from this community, have benefited from participating in the course.

Not only does the church want to provide programming that reaches out into their community, but also to make services available to the community, without asking for anything in return.

The church has put on a car show and burnout competition aptly named Holy Smoke and an annual Community Fall Festival. Last year, the festival created a carnival-like atmosphere, provided food to over 1,100 individuals from the community and fireworks?all free-of-charge.

This year attendance is expected to double for the festival finale—a professionally orchestrated, full audio and visual fireworks display.

Rosewood is continually searching for new ways to connect with people in its community.

To begin work on the most recent relationship bridge project, the church leadership posed several questions to the Regina Food Bank. "When is food the most scarce at the food bank? What would be the best time for our church to organize a drive that would be of greatest benefit to your organization?"

Their answer: Late spring and early summer. The church then set about creating the best possible scenarios for this initiative to be successful.

For several weeks, paper bags were distributed to members of the community through the local newspaper. Citizens were encouraged to collect food and either drop the bags off at one of three locations that were willing to partner with the church, or leave their bags outside their homes on Saturday, May 29 for pick-up.

Mapping out routes and finding drivers to canvass over 20,000 homes in a single day is no simple feat but they were up to the task. May 29 came and 8:00 a.m. saw more than 50 people gathered together to hit the town beneath threatening rain clouds and to begin to collect what would become the largest, single-organization food drive in the history of the Regina Food Bank.

Shortly after the start, bags began to pour into the gymnasium at Rosewood. Food was sorted and loaded into the back of the seemingly all-too-large truck provided by the food bank. Most of those involved in the outdoor work didn't need a shower by the end of the day, because of all the rain, but this did little to dampen their enthusiasm.

It became apparent, part-way through the day, that they were not going to have enough room in the barrels provided by the food bank. They filled the original food barrels, asked for more, filled them and then had to fill crates and boxes until there was no more room for the food collected.

Between 50-60 people brought in over 10,000 pounds of food in ten hours. That's an average of close to 200 pounds of food each person hauled down rain-sodden streets into trucks and trailers and then into a gymnasium to be sorted and wheeled out to the larger truck.

In the end, they didn't really know how many people their efforts helped and most of the people receiving the food will never know it came from the sweat and dedication of this group of church-goers.

They do know, however, that another bridge has been built. Both leaders and businesses were willing to partner with the church. And people in their community went out of their way to assist them to help others.

Building bridges to and relationships with their local community continues to be a vision for Rosewood Park Alliance Church. Its recent 10,000 pound surprise is a great example of how that plan is working.