UGRM dishes up 1,600 holiday meals

The United Gospel Rescue Mission smoked 72 turkeys to serve the more than 1,600 Thanksgiving meals “to our fellow citizens in Butler County,” said the Rev. Greg Kirk, executive director.

All but about 150 meals were delivered by volunteers.

“The only problem we had was the time it took to fill the boxes,” he said. “I’m saying you can only fill them so fast. The drivers would come and take a run. It wasn’t like we were waiting on drivers. We had so many, but we didn’t feed the public until 1:30 p.m.”

Kirk added he felt bad about the wait.

“The public had to wait outside, but there was nothing we could do about it,” he said. “We apologized to them. Everybody’s like, ‘We don’t care. We’re fine.’ It wasn’t raining or bad weather. It was really nice.”

Kirk credits COVID with the majority of the meals being to-go orders.

“I think that’ll consistently stay that way,” he said. “People are afraid to get in big groups. It’s just something we’re going have to deal with. It’s not the end of the world.”

He’s hoping Christmas might be less hectic.

“For whatever reason, we do less on Christmas,” he said. “If we serve 1,600 on Thanksgiving, I bet we’ll serve 1,200 on Christmas. That’s still a lot of people.”

Kirk explained, “We’re getting geared up for Christmas. The two big things we have are banquets we do for Christmas. One is for Gregory Logistics, Inc. and one for the Butler County employees.”

Kirk said the banquets are “a good experience for our guys to learn how to serve people. The most important thing we can do is teach these men how to serve somebody. Most of them have been selfish most their life. They lived in drugs and alcohol addiction situations, that’s a very selfish place where it’s all about me and my needs and what I want for the holidays. Serving others on holidays is showing them there is something bigger than them.”

Desserts are always on Kirk’s mind when he’s planning a holiday meal.

“The big thing we’re going to need obviously is our desserts and pies. We like to have Christmas cookies: snowflakes, bells, cornucopias whatever frosted cookies. Of course, we don’t want those till the week before the event,” he said.

Kirk stressed the mission couldn’t do Thanksgiving or Christmas without volunteers.

“If the volunteers didn’t show up, we would have no business because we don’t have the employees,” he said. “The week before Christmas, we’ll have our volunteers in house Wednesday, Thursday, Friday like always, from nine to noon. We’ve got a bunch of stuff to get done.”

The mission crew will smoke extra turkeys to sell to the public. Anyone wanting a turkey needs to call 573-785-4683 at least a week before Christmas because “I need to make sure I have enough turkeys in house,” Kirk said.