Fellowship shares blessings with community meal

Fellowship General Baptist Church didn’t let the COVID-19 pandemic stop it from sharing a Thanksgiving meal with its congregation and the community.

The church hosted a “Thanksgiving hot meal giveaway drive-thru” Sunday and served nearly 500 meals.

“Rather than do nothing, we wanted to offer something to our church family and decided to go a step further and make it a community event,” said Byron Beck, the church’s senior pastor. “I think we ended up giving away 478 meals, hot meals.”

Beck said he was very pleased with how smooth the event went and the volunteer efforts that made it a success.

“I think it was energizing, a joy to the people that they could serve the Lord and serve our community,” Beck explained. “ ... I think with all the negativity of COVID, to be able to share that moment of joy was really special to everybody, both the church and the people in the community.”

It took the efforts of about 50 to 60 volunteers, but it went “real good,” said Clay Franklin, who, along with Elaine Leeds, was in charge of preparing the meal.

“We cooked about 180 pounds of turkey breasts,” Franklin said. “The cans of sweet potatoes, the 10-pound cans, we did 30 of them (and) about the same on the green beans.

“We used Stove Top dressing, 96 boxes” and had 504 dinner rolls, all of which were used except 26.

Leeds, Franklin said, began making her pumpkin sheet cakes on Friday.

“Then, me and her were out there (at the church) for about four to five hours Saturday getting things together and started,” Franklin said. “We started cooking at 8 o’clock (Sunday morning) and were ready to start serving at 3 o’clock.”

Although the food give-away wasn’t supposed to start until 4:30 p.m., “there were some cars there at 2 o’clock,” Beck said. “The first two cars, I asked them how long they had been waiting, and that’s what they said.”

Beck is unsure how many vehicles actually passed through the line.

“We started fixing containers and sending them out at 4 o’clock,” Franklin said. “When we ran out of turkey, we also ran out of cars coming by, so we were able to serve everybody that came by.”

The traffic, Beck said, slowed down considerably after 5:15 p.m., with the last container of food given away at about 5:30 p.m.

For the event, Beck said, the volunteers were divided into four teams.

The cook/kitchen team prepared the meals and placed them into the to-go containers.

“Then, we had what we call runners; they coordinated getting (the containers) from the kitchen to the cars,” Beck explained.

The third team, Beck said, was an “outside traffic control/directional team and just in general friendly wavers. We had signs that said ‘God bless you’ and ‘happy Thanksgiving,’ and some folks just stood and waved.”

The fourth team coordinated another food giveaway, Beck said.

The church, he said, had purchased 200 boxes of non-perishable food from the SEMO Food Bank, which also were given away to families in need Sunday.

“We didn’t really announce that ... we did it as a second or extra blessing,” Beck said.

Associate pastor Adam Fears agreed.

“When people pulled up, and we gave them the Thanksgiving meal, the hot meal, we just asked would it help your family to have non-perishable food for the week,” Fears explained. “If they said yes, we brought them a box of food.

“ ... It was just to be a blessing to people if they needed it.”

Fears estimated 80% of the vehicles that came through took a box of food.

“I would say we gave well over 150 boxes of food out,” which consisted of food for a week or more for a family of four, Fears said.

“We made it optional; if they needed it for the week, we wanted to make sure they had food,” Fears said. “I think everybody was excited. (Some) seemed a little surprised that we had it, but thankful.”

Fears described the give-away as a “really cool event all around,” and one that was born out of “how can we do something, have fellowship and a Thanksgiving meal with our church family and bless the community.

“In this time of COVID, what does that even look like?”

Sunday’s food giveaway, Fears said, was a compromise.

“We feel like it turned out real good,” Franklin said. “Thank God for helping us to get it together and for directing us to do it.

“We’re thankful for the people who came by, got a dinner and enjoyed it.”

Beck said there were several people who drove through the line that he didn’t know, but who were “very appreciative and grateful and said so.”