Sowing Hope

A church community looks to feed itself with the help of an old foe: the land

- Jeff Chu

BY THE SUMMER OF 2005, the Reverend Richard Joyner of Conetoe Chapel Missionary Baptist Church realized he was conducting funerals twice a month—a startling number given his town’s tiny population. Nearly 300 souls call Conetoe (pronounced “ka-'nee-ta”) home. The predominantly African American hamlet is situated in North Carolina’s Edgecombe County, where a quarter of households live below the poverty line and heart disease kills more 20- to 39-year-olds than do car accidents. “I’ve closed too many coffins on young people,” Joyner, 64, says.

The pastor found it difficult to comfort the grieving: “How do you tell someone who’s just lost a child to poor nutrition that this was God’s plan when it was totally preventable? Who would hang out with that God?”