13 Oct
by Derrick Vander Waal
ALTON, IOWA – The food would have ended up in the landfill.
ALTON, IOWA – The food would have ended up in the landfill.
Instead, Rod Hofmeyer of rural Alton discovered a way to provide that good food to hundreds – even thousands – of people throughout northwest Iowa.
It all started by him personally delivering small quantities of food from the former Advance Brands plant in Orange City to families more than a decade ago, but it has blossomed into a rapidly-growing ministry – Zestos – that provides food, clothing and other necessities, and housing to people who need it.
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| Jayne and Rod Hofmeyer of rural Alton have been consumed with a passion of feeding the hungry and reaching out to people in need in northwest Iowa, establishing the Zestos ministry. For their selfless service, they have been selected as the 2016 Addink Community Service Award honorees and will be presented the honor at Promise Community Health Center’s eighth annual “An Evening of Promise” on Thursday, Nov. 3, at Terrace View Event Center in Sioux Center. |
But Hofmeyer is the first to tell you that it wasn’t him doing anything. It was God opening the doors all along the way to give him the means to feed the hungry and care for those in need. Even the passions that drive him in his ministry were given to him by God, he said.
“I’m just a farm kid that cares, and the only reason that I care is because God put something in me that wasn’t there before,” he said. “I’m not anything special.”
But people have taken notice of his servant outlook – and that of his wife, Jayne, who has been a partner at his side in the effort throughout the years.
For their selfless service, Rod and Jayne Hofmeyer will be presented with the fifth annual Addink Community Service Award during Promise Community Health Center’s “An Evening of Promise” on Thursday, Nov. 3, at Terrace View Event Center in Sioux Center. They were selected after being nominated for the honor by multiple people.
Amanda Bahena, an attorney for Woods, Fuller, Shultz & Smith of Sioux Center, said she had the pleasure of working with the Hofmeyers as they walked alongside a community member dealing with legal issues.
Amanda Bahena, an attorney for Woods, Fuller, Shultz & Smith of Sioux Center, said she had the pleasure of working with the Hofmeyers as they walked alongside a community member dealing with legal issues.
“Rod and Jayne go beyond trying to fix immediate problems for the people they help,” she said. “They are truly concerned with resolving the underlying issues of struggling community members to try to break cycles of poverty and depression. Rod and Jayne are a gift to the community. Their compassion is evident in everything they do.”
The seeds to Zestos – which was officially incorporated as a nonprofit agency in January 2009 and now is based in Alton – were planted many years before the organization ever was formed.
Rod Hofmeyer, who was working at Advance Brands, started hauling away trailers of food items – ranging from chicken nuggets to hamburgers – given to him by the plant to feed to his hogs and cattle on his small rural Alton farm about 15 year ago. It was a win-win for both parties because the plant would have incurred the cost of landfilling food waste, which had fallen on the floor or couldn’t be used for other reasons, and he was getting free food for his animals.
But, Hofmeyer started noticing a couple of years later small quantities of finished food product that were different – food that came from damaged cases – mixed in the bulk containers of food he was receiving. He asked questions and found out nothing was wrong with the food.
“Naturally, I thought, here’s a chance for us to help some people,” Hofmeyer said.
At the consent of the plant, he started receiving that food separately. Initially, he and a few church volunteers filled freezers with the food and delivered it directly to families who would be blessed by it. But the food opportunity increased greatly when he started getting pallets of food from the plant’s test kitchen where bulk recipes were being tried out.
As the years passed, the collection of food donation has expanded to many other sources, including groceries, restaurants, warehousing facilities, processing plants and farmers who donate animals for butchering. That allowed Zestos to manage the loss of its first primary food source when Advance Brands closed in Orange City in 2012.
As food supplies increased, Hofmeyer began talking to people in churches in Orange City about establishing a community meal, which now is called The Shepherd’s Table, as an outreach to struggling people in the community. The first meal drew 70 people in 2009; the next month was double that. It has remained steady since. After the meals, the people in attendance are given grocery bags full of frozen food and bakery items from Zestos to take home.
That fellowship meal concept has spread in the years since to over a dozen communities across northwest Iowa, including Sioux Center, Rock Valley, Le Mars, Sheldon and Hawarden. Zestos still provides the bags of frozen groceries, canned goods and bakery products for people to take home at many of those community meals, but some communities have made the events entirely their own.
People also can pick up food directly from Zestos in Alton.
Food now is distributed to well of 1,000 people every month.
“Everyone puts their own name on it, and it’s theirs,” Hofmeyer said about The Shepherd’s Table meals. “They are as unique as the community that they serve. We didn’t invent the idea of food and fellowship being a thing, but something about this just stuck. The Shepherd’s Table meals have continued to spread.”
To be sure, the Zestos ministry has gone beyond meeting people’s food needs.
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| Rod Hofmeyer checks out the delivery of items for The Shepherd’s Closet ministry in the alley behind the Zestos offices in Alton. Zestos also has food and transitional housing programs as it seeks to reach people who have various needs in northwest Iowa. |
Zestos maintains a supply of clothing, furniture and other household items that it can provide people at no cost to fill immediate needs. It also operates The Shepherd’s Closet retail outlets in the former OK Cafe in Alton and in a downtown Le Mars location. Those stores serve a dual purpose of providing a revenue stream to support the Zestos ministry and making goods available to people at affordable prices.
The Shepherd’s Fold program of Zestos provides Christ-centered transitional housing for men, women and children needing a fresh start. The program started about 10 years ago with a mobile home in Orange City, but four small apartments now are located in the former OK Cafe in Alton. Hofmeyer can tell heart-warming stories of people who have been helped, including a Mexican-American woman and her children after her husband had been deported. The family now owns its own home in Le Mars.
“Sometimes the stories aren’t so sweet, wonderful and good. But, sometimes, they just blow me away,” he said. “This one is so good. I just adore that family.”
With each ministry opportunity, Hofmeyer explained how God laid roadblocks in the way that he might not have understood at the time. Yet, each time, God later opened new and much better scenarios for them to more effectively serve people.
“God has gone ahead of us many times,” he said. “I don’t want to take it for granted, but I don’t sweat it out anymore because I know He’s going to come through.”
Most importantly, he said it was God who put the passion in his heart to serve people in need.
After high school, Hofmeyer went through a period of his life that was “pretty self-indulgent, pretty reckless and pretty irresponsible.” He ended up in Denver and later Las Vegas, where a total stranger approached him and brought him to a man who ran a ministry house. Hofmeyer had a strong distaste for him at first, but he ultimately became a mentor who helped to turn Hofmeyer’s life around.
“That time in Las Vegas for a year and a half, I really became involved in helping people,” Hofmeyer said. “That was really the first time I really cared about anything other than my own interest in any given moment in my life. That started there.”
Another “wake-up call” for him was when he experienced heart issues a few years after he and his wife, Jayne, moved from New Mexico back to his family’s farm place in rural Alton in 1992. He realized that he should not delay to act if he truly wanted to make an impact in this life.
The passion that drives him keeps motoring on – and getting stronger.
“My joy and the fullness of my life, it keeps getting better and fuller. I have no intentions of stopping. I’m going to have to stop breathing. That’s the only thing that’s going to make me quit,” Hofmeyer said with a chuckle. “It’s a desire to help.”
Promise Community Health Center of Sioux Center is the only Federally Qualified Health Center serving the far northwest corner of Iowa. Promise provides medical, prenatal, dental, vision and behavioral health services. To learn more, visit www.promisechc.org and watch this video.
BEHIND THE NAME:
Rod Hofmeyer pointed to the Bible passage Revelations 3:15-16, which calls on the church in Laodicea not to be lukewarm. He said the Greek word “Zestos” means “boiling hot” and to have “a fervor of mind and zeal; to be zealous in the pursuit of good.” Therefore, the mission of Zestos is to be boiling hot, not lukewarm, in its zeal of following Jesus Christ’s call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and care for those in need.
PAST ADDINK AWARD HONOREES:
Here are the past Addink Community Service Award honorees:
- Ken and Barb Addink – 2012;
- Tom and Marlene Van Holland – 2013;
- Jean Ellis – 2014;
- Rob and Sharon Schelling – 2015.
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| David Hira, a magician and comedian, will entertain the audience at Promise CHC’s “An Evening of Promise” on Thursday, Nov. 3. |
‘AN EVENING OF PROMISE”:
Promise Community Health Center will present its eighth annual “An Evening of Promise” Celebration and Fundraiser on Thursday, Nov. 3, at Terrace View Event Center in Sioux Center.
The event, which serves as Promise’s primary fundraiser every year, will begin at 6 p.m. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m.
The evening will feature:
- Entertainment by David Hira, a magician and comedian from Dallas, TX;
- Dinner catered by Blue Mountain Culinary Emporium of Orange City;
- Presentation of the Addink Community Service Award;
- Silent auction to support Promise.
Ticket sales for “An Evening of Promise” will run through Oct. 26.
Tickets are $40 for adults, $20 for youth ages 4-17 and free for children 3 and under. They can be purchased online at www.promiseevent2016.eventbrite.com or in person at Promise CHC, 338 1st Ave. NW, Sioux Center. For more information or to request a paper ticket form, please contact Derrick Vander Waal at 712-722-1700 Ext. 150 or derrick@promisechc.org. A ticket form also is available at this link.
To learn more about the event, read this preview story.