Saturday, November 28, 2020

Familiar But Foreign

For 25 years our church has served a family style Thanksgiving dinner to our community. We have about 500 volunteers and they help serve more than 1400 meals.





Well obviously we couldn't do that this year so we decided to make it a drive-through the day before Thanksgiving so people could just heat it up the next day. We spent a week cooking everything, putting it into containers and then on Wednesday, a few volunteers packed it all into bags and we put it in peoples trunks. When all was said and done, we gave away 2300 meals.

 Picking up the pies at Costco. This is one of two pallets plus about 20 additional pies.






Walking into church on Wednesday morning I felt that old familiar excitement, knowing you were a part of something so much greater than yourself. But the day sure was different!

Chuck put the turkey in our oven before he left for church, then Sharaya and Ally came over and made mashed potatoes... then we had our family Thanksgiving when we got home.

We FaceTimed with Diana, played some board games, and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol - that's a tradition at our house!

This was the only picture I took:

 Was your Thanksgiving different this year?

7 comments:

Pamela M. Steiner said...

I love the kind of "different" your Thanksgiving was! What a blessing to be able to bless so many people on Thanksgiving, even "from a distance". I can imagine how much they enjoyed that blessing. That's a LOT of turkey and pies and such! Wow! Our Thanksgiving wasn't terribly different. Just fewer people, but we still had 12. My sister and her immediate family joined us and our immediate family. We stayed outside as much as possible, but still ate inside because it was just too hot and sunny on the back porch in the afternoon to be comfortable. But the "KIDS" (all adults) sat in one room to eat, and the "Adults" sat in the other, which is what we always do anyway. God is good, and we are thankful for all He has done. Thank YOU, and your church, for being so loving and for reaching out to so many. That is very heart warming. Now today is the beginning of Advent...let us celebrate the coming of the Messiah!

Terri D said...

Wow!! Your church and amazing volunteers are wonderful to serve that many meals!! God bless you all. Our day wasn't much different from previous years, other than we only had four of us instead of eight or ten. We rarely have any family with us for the holidays. They all live too far away now. Yours sounds like it was blessed!!

ellen b. said...

That's a wonderful service to your community. I'm behind in my visits but I trust your family had a good Thanksgiving.

Cathy said...

Yes, ours was different but still good. So much to be thankful for even during a pandemic!

Rebecca Jo said...

I love you all were able to serve food this year. I know many were appreciative of it

Barb said...

Hi Cindy!

What an amazing feat, and wonderful service! There was a church in our area who did a drive up dinner and I know it was much appreciated. A lot of work, but so many blessings.

I love traditions, and I love the Muppets Christmas Carol!

My family all quarentined so that we could spend the day together. Christmas will most likely be spent with just me and my husband, and that's ok, better safe than sorry.

Have a wonderful week!

Hugs and Love
Barb

Jeanie said...

The drive thru was a wonderful idea. It's a great project.