What would you do if you were told you didn’t have much time to live?
Would you panic? Would you go quiet? They say that before you die, who you really are finally shows.
When my mother was told she didn’t have much time left, she said: “I’d rather die in the arms of the LORD than in the hands of the Devil.”
And then, wracked by pain and the complications of her cancer, she made sure she gave back.
Who she was
My mother, Marie Evelyn Charles 〔1958–2024〕, was a believer in giving back to her community. Her faith, her code, her ethics, her upbringing — all of it was rooted in charity. “It is better to give than to receive” was her motto, and she didn’t just talk it. She walked it. She lived it.
From childhood, she taught me that we have a responsibility to be neighborly. To take care of one another. That we are our brother’s keeper.
Too often we see suffering in our community and do nothing about it, thinking that whatever little we could do would be too small to matter. But if you think you’re too small to make a difference, you’ve never spent a night in a room with a mosquito.
From Jacmel to Crown Heights
My mother saw a great deal of suffering in Haiti. Her father encouraged her to act on her convictions — to do something about what she saw rather than simply grieve it. She carried that instruction with her for the rest of her life.
From her neighbors in Jacmel to the friends and family she made in Crown Heights, she made a difference in the lives of the people around her.
Sometimes that difference was a hot plate of food for an older man who had nowhere to go and nothing to eat. Sometimes it was a bag of groceries for a mother of three who had just joined her church’s congregation. If you came through my mother’s door hungry, you did not leave that way. She would feed you first and ask what was wrong after.
She’s gone now. But her table isn’t.
What we’re doing on November 21st
On Saturday, November 21, 2026, we’re taking my mother’s table on the road.
The Feed Your Soul Tour will serve free, hot, home-cooked meals at two Brooklyn stops in a single day:
- Canarsie — Nexus, 9108 Flatlands Avenue
- Flatbush — 2177 Clarendon Road
No forms. No income test. No questions. If you’re hungry, there’s a plate for you — and if you’re not, come anyway and sit with your neighbors.
Food insecurity in Brooklyn isn’t an abstraction. It’s the family stretching the last of the groceries to Friday. It’s the senior choosing between the pharmacy and the supermarket. It’s the household that has never asked anyone for anything and doesn’t know how to start. My mother fed those people her whole life without ever once making them feel small. That’s the standard we’re holding ourselves to.
What your gift does
Our goal is $25,000. It goes to food and to getting that food hot to the table.
- $25 — helps cover up to 2 hot meals and get them to the table
- $50 — helps feed a family, about 2–3 plates
- $100 — helps feed a large family, about 5–6 plates
- $410 — one full pan, start to finish, helping feed about 20 neighbors
- $1,250 — three pans on the serving line
- $2,500 — six pans, carrying a substantial share of the day
- $5,000 — twelve pans, and a neighborhood eats
Other ways to help
- Pledge a pan. If you cook — and can cook out of a licensed or commercial kitchen — you can pledge a pan of food instead of a check. We’re aiming for 125 pledged pans. Email donate@edenow.org and we’ll get you on the list.
- Volunteer. We need 30 people to serve, set up, and break down — about 15 at each stop.
- Share this page. Send it to your congregation, your group chat, your block. The mosquito only works if there’s more than one.
One last thing
My mother spent the last months of her life making sure other people ate. She had every excuse not to. She used none of them.
All we’re doing on November 21st is setting her table one more time — and carrying it far enough to reach Brooklyn.
Thank you for pulling up a chair.
— Pastor Sander Cameau