Breaking bread to help the helpless
Staff writer
Michelle Flaming isn’t your typical businesswoman. Her homemade sourdough business is slow and considered, and restricted to her kitchen oven at the county lake.
Since Flaming began baking sourdough three weeks ago, she has sold only nine loaves.
An additional five have gone to her husband, who has “become kind of a bread snob,” according to Flaming.
Michelle is not selling bread to make herself dough.
The money generated from sales goes toward making “blessing bags”: homemade sacks filled with hygienic products, food, and a plastic tin with a deck of paper cards, which Flaming calls a “blessing box”.
The cards are color-coded based on emotion. Written on each is a verse from scripture.
“I find scriptures that would help somebody if they’re happy, if they’re thankful, if they’re angry, anxious, lonely, or sad,” Flaming said.
A random “thankful” card pulled from the deck quotes Corinthians 9:15: “Thanks be for God for his indescribable gifts!”
Flaming refers to the cards as Bible “appetizers” and hopes they will spread the gospel to the homeless and needy, who are recipients of the bags.
“As I’m cutting them out, I just pray that His word will not return void,” she said.
Flaming began baking sourdough half a year ago as part of her and her husband’s plan to eat more homemade foods.
After realizing she was producing more bread than the couple could eat, she thought she might sell it to finance her blessing bags.
Flaming credits the Aulne Church community, which has donated money and hygienic supplies, with helping support the project.
She was inspired by Operation Christmas Child, a project local churches like Aulne participate in every holiday season. Gift boxes are sent to children in need around the world.
Around $100 a month goes to stocking the bags, according to Flaming.
A blessing bag costs around $8 to make, not including the time spent printing and cutting out bible verses.
Flaming, a former schoolteacher, initially distributed blessing bags to students at Peabody-Burns and Marion schools. Sixty bags went to schools last year, she approximated.
Many schools around the county have similar programs to support children, however, and Flaming has since switched mainly to passing out bags to the homeless.
“I keep a bunch of the bags in my car, and when you drive up to a stoplight and you see someone with a sign that says ‘anything will help,’ I hand them a blessing bag,” she said.
Flaming has given away the most bags in Wichita and Topeka.
Locals who are not homeless but struggling also have received blessing bags.
“It’s just good to have them around,” she said.
Flaming distributes bags to others in Aulne. They pass them out when they see fit. One added benefit for volunteers: The soap in the bags smells great in a hot car.
She has handed out five bags to the homeless this year and is planning to make a run to county schools soon to see if they would like any.
The bread business has been fun, Flaming said, but it is meant simply to be an extension of her charity work.
“I believe that we’re to be the hands and feet of Jesus,” she said. “That’s why we’re on this earth, to spread the Gospel.
“The sweet spot is when you can work on the earthly and the heavenly together. And that’s what the blessing bags do. They infuse those two things.”