December Food Pantry was huge!

The December food give away was a huge success. Or Surprise. Take your pick. We had the 2nd half of the FEMA money that I had been holding on too for 6 months so that we could get hams for the Christmas box. It's only about a weeks work of meals but its something. Those were really nice boxes this time. The first two pictures are of all 225 boxes that we put together. We still had a good bit of miscellaneous canned goods left over for emergency boxes. We made up 225 boxes and had enough money to have 225 hams. Last year we gave out 196 hams so we thought we would get some extras for this year.



There were 159 boxes stacked up on the pallets and the rest were on top of the long row of tables. Our volunteers worked hard and fast on Thursday the 20 to load up those boxes. Then on Friday evening James Wright drove up with our hams and we carried them into the pantry. The hams had to be added as the boxes were picked up on Saturday the 22nd. People started lining up in the Bollinger Theater's parking lot by 9:30. WE don't give out the food until 12.

All the volunteers for Saturday turned out and we started giving out those boxes. I started worrying about 12:45 if we were going to have enough to go all that were coming. I don't broadcast what will be in a box ahead of time. I did have a couple of folks that I took to the side and talked to about scamming us. I had found out that two 'households' were actually one. They knew that we can only give one box per household. I hope one day that we can give a larger box to the larger families. But that is a thought for another day. When we hit the 225 mark Sr. Mary Jean and Jan Spradling and Joe and Millie Goforth and the others from Calhoun City and Vardaman threw it into high gear and made up more boxes. Sr. Mary ended up having to give some gift cards to Freds and Piggly Wiggly to the last 3 people in line. We gave out a total of 244 boxes and then the gift cards so there were 247 households that we gave too.

Christmas and New Years is sort of like Easter and Christmas at Church. You only see some folks at Easter and Christmas time like they can get all of their religious nuturing in those two holy days. Its like that at the pantry. WE might see some of these people a time or two during the year and then we won't see them again until its time for a presumed special box. I would love to be able to give out a great box year round. But that is not always possible. But I do know that there were some nice dinner spreads for the Christmas feast this year.