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They come in droves carrying bags and cardboard boxes lugging pots and pans, discarded crates and empty strollers. By eight many mornings their numbers at this food distribution center swell to a thousand. It is a place where truth and consequences collide, rub up against each other and shift the course of human suffering.

It is a glaring snapshot repeated every Tuesday and Thursday at the Rock Church and World Outreach Center’s food distribution complex on Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino.

They are among the growing number of ‘recession ravaged’, a term for those newly displaced by layoffs, foreclosures or other financial troubles caused by the recession. They differ from the chronic homeless, the longtime street residents who often suffer from mental illness, drug abuse or alcoholism.

Yet these disturbing images of educated, middle class workers, men, women and children, students, couples, singles and the elderly – some clutching their stomachs, others grasping their heads.  This is a picture out of focus for many in this middle-class bedroom community shadowed by Loma Linda University and its sprawling world-class medical complex.

These people share a common ailment. They are hungry.

Their images are not the starvation of Somalia or Rwanda that galvanizes global attention: bloated bellies, emaciated arms, failing bodies along roadsides.

Hunger here saps people in more subtle ways; families eat once a day or skip meals for several days, causing chronic malnutrition.

They are educated, middle class workers like Robert Wilson.

“I’ve been out of work for three months – I’m here just trying to make ends meet.” In late September Wilson moved to the area from Garden Grove hoping he’d have better luck finding a job.  He didn’t.

His partner Jacqueline Furlow once led a comfortable life working as a custodian at the San Bernardino Police Department.

Today she is jobless and living with her sister.

On this damp, chilly morning Furlow and Wilson join the long line inching forward to a registration area, alternately distressed and hopeful, searching for work and praying their fortunes will change.

“You never think of people going hungry in America until it’s you,” says Wilson. The couple leaves the area carrying sacks of fruits, vegetables, bread and water, things that won’t spoil quickly.

“It’s great because we don’t have a refrigerator,” says Furlow.

The reality of hunger is a challenge, church volunteer Deborah Giscome, 51 knows all to well - she’s been there. She recalls everything about that balmy blue sky day, November 8, 2008 when she moved back to her native San Bernardino from New York City.  Penniless and hungry, she remembers the laughter and smells that drifted from a small Mexican restaurant into the parking lot where she sat contemplating what was once the unthinkable.

“I prayed God - where am I going to get my next meal. You don’t really know the face of hunger until you see it in the mirror.”

Ironically help came from the very hands she now calls her vessel of salvation.

“They fed me and gave me drink when I was hungry. I was a stranger – they took me in. Now it’s my turn to give back,” said Giscome.

These days she holds a part-time job and volunteers at the center several times a week. “I love coming here because I know what it’s like to go to bed hungry. I can relate to the people who eat what we give them before they make it out of this parking lot. I’ve been there.”

Church administrator Fred Adams equates the good works to one of the church’s seven pillars: Matthew 25:35.

“For I was hungry and you gave ‘Me’ food; I was thirsty and you gave ‘Me’ drink; I was a stranger and you took ‘Me’ in – Understanding the goodness and love of God we believe that good works, feeding, clothing and caring for people are a major part of who we are.”

“It’s scary how many kids here are hungry,” says Giscome as she and more than a dozen volunteers hover over tables stacked with boxes and pallets of lettuce, beans, potatoes, bread, water, apples and other food stuffs.

What might look like chaos on the surface is in fact a well oiled operation that on average provides food to as many as 10,000 people a week. Last year the center fed over one-half million people.

The complex is an 8,500 foot fully stocked warehouse adjacent to the church. Workers use forklifts to move pallets to make room for church owned and operated tractor trailers that haul food and hygiene products to the campus for distribution. A large walk-in refrigerator keeps the food fresh.

The food center is privately funded and reaches out to over 40 outside ministries and organizations that provide to their local communities.

No one is turned away, says Adams. “There’s no obligation to be a part of the church. You’re not required to attend or be a member.  We believe if a person’s physical need is met, they will allow you to meet their spiritual needs.”

The church has served as a lifeline to the poor since it was founded in 1988 when senior pastors Jim and Deborah Cobrae gathered some friends to deliver rice and beans from the back of a pickup truck to people in the city’s neediest neighborhoods.

“Our mission is to love people to life,” says the center’s supervisor Bryan Schultze. “This does more than help the poor survive. It offers them hope for the future.” “You see the hunger in these kid’s eyes. It breaks your heart,” says Terry L. Marble, who supervises the warehouse refrigerator.

“When you provide for their needs, their faces light up. It’s a beautiful sight.”

For the newly homeless like Fredia Delacruz who holds an associate’s degree in electronic engineering, the plight of the recession ravaged is real. She remembers a comfortable life in Loma Linda where she owned a brick ranch style home and made $56,000 a year.

“My parents always taught me to work hard in school, graduate high school, go to college, get a degree and you’ll do fine. You’ll do better than your parents.”

Sitting on a bus bench a few feet from the food center, Delacruz carefully opens a loaf of donated bread and passes slices to her two little girls. “Perlas para mi nina chica” (pearls for my little girls) she whispers in Spanish: “en alabanza a las buenas obras” (In praise of good works!).