In rural Eureka, a small town nine miles south of the U.S.-Canada border in northwest Montana's Tobacco Valley region, St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church's wood bank ministry helps keep families warm every winter.
“In the very beginning, we didn’t know what was ahead at all. …St. Michael is a tiny church,” the Rev. Pattiann Bennett, the church’s retired rector who still leads the wood bank ministry, said. “But as it unfolded, community involvement has grown all these years, and some of the original volunteers still show up every Saturday.”
Bennett said she was inspired to start the ministry at St. Michael after learning about Beaverhead Community Wood Bank, Inc., a former ministry of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Dillon that’s now an independent nonprofit.
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