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| Santa Claus? Or is it longtime volunteer Dan? Whoever it is, he worked very hard serving coffee, tea and hot chocolate and made our guests smile. |
Today was our last Wednesday Community Meal of 2012.
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral will be closed the Wednesday after Christmas so the next service will be on January 2, 2013.
It's been a busy year at the Wednesday Community Meal. Every month we've seen the number of meals we serve continue to rise. We've also increased our gleaning to help fight the increase in food costs. Without the support of organizations and businesses like The Oregon Food Bank, Good Samaritian Hospital, Pizza Schmizza, Starbucks, Baker & Spice, Spring Hill Organic Farm, Phil's Meat Market and Grand Central Bakery, we couldn't feed our guests with our limited budget. The gleaning has been a real blessing to our program.
When we started the Wednesday Lunch in 2004, there were just two of us handing out peanut butter sandwiches and if we served 50 we thought that was huge.
In the Spring of 2008 we served our first full-service indoor meal and our numbers were hardly ever over 150 for that first year.
Now, four years later, we regularly serve between 250 and 320 meals each Wednesday. Guest come for the food but I believe they return because of the hospitality. Everyone is welcome and treated with kindness.
Thanks to our wonderful hardworking volunteers, we served 289 meals today.
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| We had numerous meal changes today. One of the most popular was roasted pork with gravy, asparagus and a baked potato. |
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| With school out for Winter Break, we had extra help from some young volunteers today. Here is high school student Zane stirring a pan of teriyaki chicken. |
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| The meal couldn't go on without our hardworking dishwashers. Longtime volunteer Bill even smiles as he works. |
