Thanksgiving was in the air

On Sunday afternoon we set out to put together 25 Thanksgiving baskets. Cynthia Strouse, Gwyn Green, Sandy Stone and Sharon Fishkin sorted and separated all the food that had come in over the last three weeks. The amount of food donated this year, despite the economic crunch, was amazing. We also received over $800 in cash to fill the gap.

Gwyn Green, Dick and Cynthia Strouse left church to go to Shop Rite to finish shopping right after church. Because of the generosity of our congregation, they not only picked up the few items needed to complete the baskets, they also added several perishable items that had been cut from our lists this year. I met up with them at the checkout line and saw three wagons filled with milk, eggs, butter, bread, juices and other goodies. We ended up spending $450 and put the rest aside for Christmas and to stock the food pantry. (Since then we had spent an additional forty dollars to supply Thanksgiving meals to two additional families within the church family.)

At 3:00 p.m. our crew gathered to put the baskets together. Sandy & Bethany Stone, Chelsey Calkins, Madelyn Fishkin, Zelda Earle, Bella, Fred Green and Steve Contois all jumped in to make the job go quicker. Just before 4:00 p.m. the crowd started arriving to pick up their baskets. It was a heartfelt time as we passed out the food and received words of gratitude from the people we were serving.

At the end of the day we delivered 20 baskets for families in our community and seven for people within our wider church family. Thank you for your generosity. It made a happy day for a lot of people.

Cal