Grace Community Church in Falcon is planning ahead for Thanksgiving. They’re expecting to feed about 70 to 80 people.The congregation began the tradition of providing Thanksgiving baskets three years ago and has continued it each year, said Pastor Pat Jeffrey, senior pastor of the growing community church. “We started this when we were out at Latigo, before we were even in this building,” he said. The numbers have only increased, Jeffrey said, since the first year when they delivered to about six families.Several weeks prior to the holiday, the congregation gathered grocery carts full of food items to fill Thanksgiving baskets for families who may not be able to afford dinner. The baskets are stuffed with most of the traditional Thanksgiving goodies, including, of course, the turkey.Based on this year’s number of suggested 15 to 20 families and an average of three to four people per family, Jeffrey said they expect to help around 70 to 80 people enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner. “Our church is 99.9 percent [people from] Falcon so it’s more than likely that the families the church will be delivering to are families in Falcon,” he said.Grace Community provided its members with ideas for a Thanksgiving holiday grocery list, and members had until early to mid-November to bring in as many items on the list as they could. Jeffrey said volunteers were keeping track of food as it came in, and the remainder of items needed was purchased through money from the church’s mission fund. “It’s our budgeted mission money,” he said.On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, about 20 church members gathered to disperse the food in the boxes and deliver them to the families. Jeffrey said the boxes were filled based on the number of family members.Members could be heard: “OK. Putting a box together for a family of five. We need a big turkey, two boxes of stuffing and four cans of beans. OK. This is the address. Who will deliver it?”Jeffrey said the volunteers don’t have specific duties. “It’s just whoever wants to go (to deliver the boxes),” he said. “Some families will do just one while someone else may do two or three. We’ve had some families who have made an entire day of it.”Some make it a family affair like Pam Kauffman and her 16-year-old daughter, Caitlyn. “We are doing this again because we are blessed with so much,” Pam Kauffman said. “We know that this is one way we can give back to the community.” She said after talking with the church’s stewardship leader, she gained a new perspective. “She said to me, ‘You know, we are all just inches away of being in the same position (of being without food). You never know,'” Kauffman said.The boxes were scheduled for delivery by Sunday evening so the receiving families receiving would have ample time to thaw and prepare the turkey by Thanksgiving.Most of the people they deliver to are grateful for the baskets, but Jeffrey said one year a special connection was made because of a delivery to a family where Spanish was the primary language. “The only ones in the house who could speak English were the little children,” he said, which prompted the church member who delivered the basket to take Spanish lessons. A friendship blossomed between the church member and the Spanish family.Jeffery said Grace Community Church plans to continue the tradition each year. And he invited all the other area churches and community organizations to join them.
