In The Chair: Secretary Brian for most of the meeting then President Peter stepped in after getting rid of his wayward oats.
Members: 14
Guests Pastor Emosi Taginadikalu and his wife Loata Muani.
Javian
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Pastor Emosi Taginadikalu – River of Life Church, Leeton
Bulla (Hello/Welcome)
Pastor Emosi is the leading Pastor of the River of Life Church that meets at the MIA (Club).
He first came to Sydney from Fiji to help his father who was a pastor in a Sydney church. He then decided to apply for a religious visa so that he could stay to help in his father’s work. This was granted in 2017.
At that time the Sydney church was ministering to Fijians who were playing football in Leeton. Pastors from the church would travel to provide a service every Sunday. After one visit Pastor Emosi voiced his intention to move to Leeton. He had an old Commodore and it struggled to make the trip.
When the Commodore died, he was given a van to start the food bank. He was involved in the food bank in Sydney and decided he would like to create one in Leeton. To organize the food, he would leave Leeton after work on Friday afternoon, drive to Sydney and stay at his cousin’s house. The next morning, he would drive to the warehouse in Sydney, load the van with a pallet of food and then return to Leeton. His fastest time for the Sydney – Leeton trip was 5 hours.
One Christmas, he hired a truck from Griffith to increase his food supply for the parcels. Much of the food was supplied out of his pocket. He has tried to make Leeton a Centre of food distribution. He now has an arrangement with Aldi in Griffith for food and has sourced bread from Coles. He has now extended his outreach to Narrandera and advertised in the ‘I live in Narrandera’ page. He was overwhelmed with the response He was surprised at the number of older people in Narrandera that were in need of the free food parcels.
He has a passion to help people but also to encourage his parishioners to be part of the community. They organized a BBQ at the MIA club on a Friday to raise funds and provided a free Christmas lunch last year at the MIA Club and sang at the Light up Leeton.
Pastor Emosi certainly demonstrated his love of people and the community. This was highlighted by Jennifer Newton in her vote of thanks.
