Divine Mercy builds community with Meals for Moms

By LORI BERGLUND
Special to Lumen Media
 
           “A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just,” — Pope Francis.
 
 At Divine Mercy Catholic Parish, nothing says mercy like a hot, home-cooked meal delivered fresh to a new mom and her family. Divine Mercy is a sprawling church family, encompassing all of the over-sized Kossuth County and parts of Palo Alto and Humboldt counties at the northcentral tip of Iowa. Parish administration is centered in Algona.
 
“We’re really spread out. It’s a very rural area, and it can be 45 minutes to get between church buildings, so we don’t always know each other,” remarked parish member Miranda Knobloch.
 
When Knobloch kicked off Divine Mercy’s new Meals for Moms ministry in the summer of 2024, she just wanted to give new moms a night off from kitchen duty. She didn’t expect that it would also be a ministry of socialization, bringing together members of what is still a relatively newly-combined parish family from many historic churches and helping them get to know one another just a little bit better.
 
 A young mom herself, with a 14-month-old daughter, Knobloch understands first-hand the challenge of getting back into a family routine after delivering a newborn baby. Moms are tired, they may be caring for older children as well as the newborn, and they have important medical needs of their own. While paternal leave is becoming more common, many dads still have to return to work very quickly after their wife delivers, limiting their time to help at home as well. Single moms face an even larger workload.

Miranda Knobloch is helping other young moms in her large parish

Knobloch was inspired to create ‘Meal Trains for New Moms’ to help take one thing off their to-do list. She put out a call for volunteers from throughout the parish last summer and soon had 42 volunteer chefs signed up to cover one meal each. The program seeks to provide 10 to 12 nightly meals for new moms and their families, so not all volunteers are needed for each meal train. 

A 2017 graduate of Bishop Garrigan High School in Algona, Knobloch lives near West Bend and grew up as a member of Sts. Peter and Paul Church there. She and her husband, Dalton, decided that she would be a stay-at-home mom to daughter Stella, and she couldn’t be happier.
 
 “I love it,” she said. “I never pictured this is where I would be, but it’s the perfect job for me.”
 
Meeting the new moms and volunteer chefs from throughout the combined parish of Divine Mercy has been an unexpected blessing of the program for her personally. As every mom knows, having a network of new moms — as well as more experienced moms — is critical for all the years of child-rearing ahead.
 
“It’s helped me meet other moms; that’s been a really fun part of it,” she said. “I didn’t even know one of the moms before, but now we talk every week. We both want to home-school our kids, so we talk a lot about that.”
 
The program also brings wide age groups together, between the young moms and many of the more experienced, volunteer chefs.
 
“It’s all volunteer-based,” Knobloch said. “I send out an email when we have a mom sign up and let the volunteer chefs know that we have a new mom. I also include some information about the family, to give them an idea of how many kids and their ages.”
 
After all, feeding toddlers is a little different than feeding teenagers. But they all need to eat, and many older children also need a little extra attention when a new baby comes home, so a friendly face at the door can make a big difference in their day.
 
In many ways, recruiting volunteer chefs has been easier than getting some of the new moms to sign up to accept this small act of charity and mercy from their fellow parish members.
 
“People don’t like to ask for help,” Knobloch said. “I think with a lot of the moms, it was a friend or another parishioner that urged them to sign up.”
 
Even then, once Knobloch calls the mom to find out their needs, the moms are hesitant to accept help.
 
“Usually they say, ‘I don’t need this,’” Knobloch explained. “I say, ‘Yes, you do. You are a recovering post-partum mom. This is truly a time to rest and recover. You just went through a lot, and this gives you time to bond with your baby instead of standing in the kitchen.’”
 
In the end, the moms are always very appreciative and glad they accepted the help, she noted. When a delivery date is scheduled or anticipated, moms may sign up to start the meal trains once they return home from the hospital. In other cases, a grandmother may be coming to stay for several days, so the meal train may start once the new family is on their own again.
 
“Part of charity is giving and receiving,” Knobloch said. In rural Iowa, learning to be on the receiving end is something new for many people, but it can also serve to grow the bonds of community. “Charity is being open to things, as well as to giving.”
 
The program began in July and to date they have served at least six new moms and their families. All of them have been moms with older children also in the home.
 
Oftentimes, the moms enjoy simple, comfort food. Soups, casseroles, pasta dishes and foods rich in protein are popular. Chicken, pork loin, plus garden-fresh food in the summer are also great choices.
 
But it’s not the food choice that’s most important. It’s the act of giving that makes a real difference, the organizer said.
 
“We just want to make the new moms feel supported,” Knobloch said. “Everyone is excited to see a new baby when they come to church, but it’s the long weekdays when you can do something to help and encourage them that makes a big difference.”
 
In some ways, rural Iowa is ideally suited for just such a project. For a retired grandmother whose children are grown and gone — and who now struggles to learn to cook for just one or two — the chance to feed a family again can be a real delight. Her recipes are already “family-sized.”
 
 Pope Francis has said, “The great mission of the family is to make room for Jesus,”
 
 What better way to make room than by feeding the families caring for the youngest members of the children of God.
 
Lori Berglund is a freelance writer based in Dayton. She is a member of Holy Trinity Parish in Webster County.