Mission serves 2,000 meals for Thanksgiving, seeks delivery drivers for Christmas

The United Gospel Rescue Mission staff and volunteers served 2,000 meals Thanksgiving Day, which was 400 more than last year.

Executive Director Greg Kirk was expecting to serve at least 1,600 people, which is about 10% of the town.

“Every year it’s grown,” the pastor said. “My first year here, in 2006, we served 900. I did not believe we would serve 900. I said ‘no way. We’re making way too much.’ We served 900.”

The mission relies on the generosity of the town to serve the meals, said Kirk, adding it can be looked at as a great Thanksgiving or a sad Thanksgiving.

“You look at the cup half empty or half full,” Kirk said. “I feel it’s great we have a community that pulled together to help us pull off 2,000 meals. I think it’s great we had probably 250 volunteers helping deliver this meal. It was crazy. I think it’s wonderful we’re able to do all this for our community. I think it’s sad we have to do that many for this community.”

He wishes the need was only for a fraction of that, serving elderly stuck at home or the firemen, police and sheriffs and emergency workers who have to work, while everybody else is able to take care of themselves.

Usually at Christmas, the mission does less than Thanksgiving, but, Kirk explained, that wasn’t true last year.

“I don’t see it being true this year,” he said. “I’m happy we were able to do it. I’m happy we’re able to pull it off. I’m sad that has to happen.”

The mission faced a shortage of drivers this year at the end of the home delivery portion of Thanksgiving morning.

“We had a ton of drivers and that’s great. The problem is about 11 o’clock, they’ve all delivered a meal or two meals and went home. But, we still had, 70 cards that needed to be done,” he said. “We can’t do the guest meal (inside the mission) until we get the to-go meals delivered.”

The drivers who did come back were great, but it wasn’t enough, Kirk said.

“We need more to come back,” he said. “Actually, I think what we need to get a team to come at 10 a.m. to deliver meals, and then ask some people to wait till 11 o’clock to come to do deliveries.”

The late home deliveries meant those dining at the mission were served much later than normal.

“When we’re all done working, we fed the volunteers,” Kirk said. “We all sit down and these groups have Thanksgiving together. We were on the last pan of white turkey, the last pan of dark turkey. That’s the first time that ever happened.”

Information will be published in December concerning additional plans for the Christmas meal.