After successful Thanksgiving, United Gospel Rescue Mission preps for Christmas

Volunteers and donors are essential ingredients to successful holiday meals at the United Gospel Rescue Mission.

The mission’s executive director, the Rev. Greg Kirk, said he and the staff couldn’t do Thanksgiving or the upcoming Christmas meal without volunteers.

“We fed over 1,800 Thanksgiving,” Kirk said. “We had hundreds of volunteers.”

Christmas is on a Sunday this year, which has Kirk concerned.

“Most of our volunteers are going to be in church,” the pastor said. “We need to remind people ‘hey, we want you to be in your church, but we still need you as volunteers. If you can, come before or after.’ We still need help and we’re worried about drivers. We might be worried about nothing, but I don’t know.”

Kirk is unsure about the number of people who will rely on the mission for a Christmas meal.

“Usually Christmas is less than Thanksgiving, but with the way things are going, a lot of people still aren’t traveling because of COVID. I expect it to be a big day and I’m going to plan to prepared for a large crowd,” he said.

When the sky is overcast and rainy, a bigger crowd shows up for the holiday meal, like this year at Thanksgiving.

Kirk believes the economy has put more people in need.

The mission also picked up extra meal duties this year.

“We had 160 meals that went straight to feed PBRMC staff. We’re proud to do it,” he said.

Volunteers on Thanksgiving came from a variety of sources: those who regularly come to volunteer, 30 community service workers from private probation, and “I had several volunteers who had never volunteered before, who said ‘I saw in the DAR newspaper you needed volunteers.’ So that was a bonus,” Kirk said.

Along with volunteers, Kirk is searching for donors to help pay for the food for Christmas.

“We had one donor who gave us over $3,500 for turkeys,” he said. “I can’t get that donor again, but if I could find a big donor to pay for all the turkeys, it would to be wonderful.”

Desserts are always on Kirk’s mind when he’s planning a holiday meal. While there were enough desserts for Thanksgiving, he’s always worried about Christmas.

“The big thing we’re going to need obviously is our desserts, cakes 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.

“If the volunteers didn’t show up, we would have no business because we don’t have the employees,” he continued. “The week before Christmas, we’ll have our volunteers in house Wednesday, Thursday, Friday like always, from 9 a.m. to noon. We’ve got a bunch of stuff to get done.”