Ernest Deroche Sr.
December 16, 2008
Whitney Nicole "Black" Jones
December 18, 2008
At Grand Caillou Baptist Church’s weekly “Power Lunch,” there are no speeches by business leaders or politicians.
Nor is there dealmaking made by attendees and invited guests.
Instead, on the menu is a home-cooked lunch and an hour of fellowship.
“It’s an outing for some of our parents who have kids in school,” said the Rev. Marcel McGee, the 14-year pastor of Grand Caillou Baptist Church. “They can invite their friends or some come from work with co-workers. I do a short devotional, but it’s not churchy. It’s mostly visitation.”
Every Thursday at noon during the school year, a group of about 20 church members and East Houma residents gather at the church to dish about matters great and small.
The camaraderie flows as easily as the Cajun French many of them speak so fluently.
“When I first came here, I didn’t speak a word of French,” McGee said.
“He still can’t. He just knows some words,” replied Paul Parfait, a regular at the Power Lunch.
About six or seven church members take turns preparing a dish. They can cook whatever they want. Cheryl Parfait, Paul’s wife, coordinates the chef roster.
“Today, my dad (Edward Fitch) prepared chicken cooked in tomato sauce and the lima beans. I cooked the rice and made the green salad,” she said. “Mrs. Mildred (Pierre) always brings the tea or a dessert.”
The Power Lunch is free. If someone wants to make a donation, McGee will accept it. If the cooks want to be reimbursed for what it cost them to prepare the meal, the church will do that as well.
When an offering of $7 was made to offset Fitch’s costs, he kindly refused.
“I may not be rich, but I’m not that poor,” he replied.
The Power Lunch started in January 2004 as way to get isolated adults to come together.
“We had quite a few people who were not working,” McGee recalled. “Our elderly adults especially like it because it gives them a time to get together with other seniors. We have a lot of stay-at-home moms who wanted a place to get out, and we had a few local people who just wanted to have lunch.”
Flooding caused by Hurricane Rita in September 2005 shut down the Power Lunch for a year. When it relaunched in 2006, as many as 30 to 35 people would come.
Attendance has dropped since then, mainly because of a man-made problem.
“We used to have a few more come until the traffic got so bad on Grand Caillou Road,” McGee said. “People who have to get back to work eat first, naturally, or they’ll never get back.”
Usually everyone finishes eating in about 45 minutes, but many stay and talk afterward. The lunch can go longer than an hour depending on how many people show up and want to hang out.
In September, the Power Lunch was put on hold for two months, this time from flooding caused by Hurricane Ike.
It took a week before McGee could get back to his church. When he did, he ran disaster relief work out of the building.
“In the beginning, the Red Cross was delivering meals that were prepared by Southern Baptist Church to our building,” he said. “We were serving 2,400 meals (1,200 lunches and 1,200 dinners) a day from our church parking lot. That went on for about three weeks after Ike.”
Despite all the people in East Houma and southern Terrebonne Parish who suffered from the storm, attendance at the free Power Lunch in the three weeks since it returned has not increased.
“Our community is a little different about that,” McGee said. “Most people in our community don’t take advantage of free stuff because it’s free. They did when they needed it and, when they didn’t, they quit coming for it.”
With the arrival of the holiday season, there is no telling how many people will show up, McGee said. He has had as few as eight or 10 in past years. Usually, the spring and fall are the best-attended times of the year.
No matter what the season, eat, drink and be merry is a Power Lunch theme year-around.
“We have some people who come and are not members of our church. We have come to know them personally,” McGee said. “The only time we ever see them is at this lunch. It gives us an opportunity to develop some friendships and relationships that wouldn’t normally be established.”
East Houma residents Summer Ratcliff (left) and Boogie Fitch dine on rice, lima beans, stewed chicken and green salad at a Thursday Power Lunch at Grand Caillou Baptist Church in Dulac. The weekly meal is open to area residents of all denominations. * Photo by KEYON J. JEFF
