Thanksgiving at the Soup Kitchen

Time certainly has a way of passing quickly when you're busy, and this past week has certainly flown by. Diane and I and several other good, helpful folks have been working hard making preparations for our Thanksgiving dinner at the Wildwood Soup Kitchen. It's always a particularly challenging day for us since almost everything about the meal is a break from our usual routine at the kitchen.

First of all, we give most of our regular Thursday volunteers the day off, so they can spend the holiday with their families. We can do this because we get so many other requests to volunteer on this special day. The problem, though, is that most of these Thanksgiving volunteers have no experience working in the soup kitchen so we need to provide a lot of direct supervision. And there are a lot of them! We usually operate with about six to ten volunteers, but tomorrow we'll have 20 or more. We'll need them though.

On Thanksgiving we don't serve the meal in the usual cafeteria style. We serve each person individually at his or her table. They are met at the door, escorted to a seat, and shown the menu. (I've included a copy.) If there's something they don't want or like, the server notes it and takes the information to the kitchen where the person's plate is then made up. The server then takes the meal and drink to the guest. Other servers will move among the tables carrying trays filled with desserts. We try to make it a special day for all who come.

As you can see by the menu, the meal has a bit of a Southern flavor, which is to be expected given our location and dear Diane's Southern heritage. Cornbread dressing and sweet potatoes never graced my family's table during my formative years in New York and New England. But our four children all grew up enjoying Diane's true Southern cooking and have kept those recipes alive in their own households.


We have some local media folks coming by our home later this afternoon. They want to interview Diane and film her carving one of the turkeys that we'll serve tomorrow at the soup kitchen. Should be interesting, but first I have to finish my chores and vacuum the rugs. A retired husband's work is never done.

Our warmest wishes for a truly Happy Thanksgiving. Take some time tomorrow to thank our loving God not only for your family and the blessings He has bestowed on you, but also for the gift of life, for your very being.

And please keep us in your prayers as we do our best tomorrow to serve God and His people. God's peace...