URS – Our History and Who We Are
Upper Room Suppers (URS) ministry served its first meal on September 16, 2011 at the Ridgecrest United Methodist Church at 639 N. Norma St, with Amy as Person In Charge (PIC) serving hot dogs. We served a total of 19 meals that first day! Today we range anywhere from 50 to 120 meals on average, including of over 100 meals the day after the July 4th, 2019 6.4 earthquake, and a record high of 170 meals during COVID drive thru service!
This ministry was founded through the efforts of church member Gerry Rambo, who personally coordinated church approval, church district grant funding, organized volunteers, updated the church kitchen to code, and earned the “A” Restaurant Inspection certification through Kern County Public Health. We were a go!
Why the name “Upper Room Suppers” you ask? We were inspired by Jesus’ story of sharing a meal together with his twelve disciples in an upper room. See Mark 14:15.
Over the years, we were blessed with amazing guests from all walks of life – regular guests from as far away as Wofford Heights – wonderful volunteers, a lifeline of donated food from the local grocery stores and Salvation Army, and generous donations from guests, Methodist District grants and other non-government organizations.
Our goals by offering the free weekly community Friday night dinners include:
(1) Offering a good meal resource to those in our community who need it.
(2) Extending a good meal out to anyone in our community who would like to come and “break bread” together.
(3) Provide a chance for folks to fellowship together and share a good conversation.
The URS meal is located at and mostly run by members of the Ridgecrest United Methodist Church, but we are fortunate to have regular volunteers from many of the other local churches, in addition to volunteers from the local schools and community. And while we were not established to spread God’s Word specifically, we are here to share God’s love – so if you have any questions about the Christian faith, ask one of our volunteers who is able to provide some resources or someone to answer your questions.
We can always use more volunteers! Especially for the lead PIC – we always need more people to organize, cook and lead the service – and we provide training 😊 If you are interested in ANY volunteer role for URS, there is a form on the “Volunteers” page – thank you so much!
Thank you for stopping by our URS page, may God bless you and yours, and we hope to see you at dinner sometime soon!