DOVER-FOXCROFT – Soon, Pastor Tom Bruce no longer will have to rig up a decrepit truck and hope it holds together long enough for his out-of-state trips to pick up food for the Living Word Food Cupboard.

The truck was on its last legs, held together only by prayer and a little Yankee ingenuity.

Thanks to a $25,000 grant received this week from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, the food cupboard has enough funds to purchase a newer and better truck.

“It comes at a perfect time,” Bruce said Friday, noting that more families are using the food cupboard.

“We had been helping 100 families a week, and now it’s up to 110 to 120 families,” he said. There is a great need out there, he believes.

The Living Word Food Cupboard, located in the Living Word Assembly of God Church, serves families from as far away as Brownville Junction and Abbot, as well as surrounding communities, from a cramped warehouse on Lincoln Street.

“It was either a truck or a new building,” Bruce said of the program’s urgent needs.

Bruce, who oversees the program, is especially thankful that the truck came first because he and Harvey Fox, co-director of the food cupboard, usually are the ones who travel throughout the eastern United States to get supplies of food for those who need assistance.

And they often have found themselves stranded beside the road because of a vehicle malfunction.

“New Jersey is nowhere to break down, especially if you have a loaded truck,” Bruce noted.

“Having a newer truck will make it a little bit easier and make us more confident about going long distances,” the pastor said.

The local food cupboard is part of the Feed the Children network, and when a warehouse has a supply of staples or other goods, such as laundry detergent, the call goes out.

“It’s usually the first person who says yes that gets the items, and usually we say yes – we don’t care what it is,” Bruce said.