Jill's Story

I want to share with you a story…

Twelve years ago Jill Bullard was buying donuts for her son’s soccer team when she watched, horrified, as dozens of them were thrown in the trash can because it was time to set out lunch. She shuddered at the waste. She knew in her heart that God wastes nothing, so why do we seem to waste everything? A week later, after continually dwelling on the scene, she went back to the same café and received permission to transport their perishable leftovers to the local shelter. The next day she arrived at the same time to do it again. This time she was refused the food. The regional manager told Jill that it would “be a cold day in hell before I see my products in soup kitchens.” Infuriated, Jill’s mission was to continue serving the hungry in spite of this woman. Her anger fueled her campaign. For over two years she used her own vehicle for transportation and her own garage for storage in order to get perishable food from restaurants and stores in the greater Raleigh area to organizations that used it to feed the hungry. Meanwhile, she worked two part-time jobs while taking care of four kids in order to cover the expenses of her new calling.

Ten years later, the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle is a million-dollar ministry that serves a seven county area. It has 21 full-time employees and distributes over four million pounds of fresh produce a year. Their mission is simply to pick up food that would otherwise be wasted and deliver it to those who need it. This year four million pounds of food will be eaten by hungry people because one woman saw a need and stepped out in faith to find a solution…

The story gets better. You would think a woman who has started a million dollar non-profit organization out of the backseat of her van would relish her position as CEO of their brand new $4 million facility…but this is not the case. Now that she sees the organization as self-sustaining, she is making strides to faze herself out. Soon she will be retiring with plans to live in Africa and work in an aids orphanage holding babies. The reason? She told me: “Kelly, leading this organization has been a huge blessing for me and an incredible journey, but the true joy lies in the servant hood. I want to do the menial tasks again. I want to let someone else lead and go back to the joy of just being a humble servant.”

I am humbled.