Certificates in place of annual community Thanksgiving dinner
A community Thanksgiving dinner that, for the past several years, has been held prior to the holiday at Ellijay First Baptist Church, will not take place this year.
However, Faith, Hope and Charity (FHC) Recycle Store Inc., which has partnered with First Baptist to sponsor the event since 2016, is helping a host of local churches to provide a meal for some local seniors and others this year.
The outreach effort comes in the form of 1,000 individual meal certificates funded by FHC.
“We have distributed them to churches for them to give out at their discretion,” confirmed Lou Summers, the organization’s church committee coordinator.
“We’ll also be giving 200 meal (certificates) to the elementary school, and we’ve given them to 911 dispatch and (recovery) homes like Isaiah House, Promised Land and the Elsie Gillam Home,” she added.
Some of the local churches that are involved in the project include Zion Hill Baptist, Liberty Baptist, By His Grace Independent, Turniptown Baptist, Mountain Light Unitarian Universalist, The Orchard, Cartecay United Methodist, Oak Hill United Methodist, Pleasant Grove Baptist, First Baptist and First United Methodist, noted FHC board chairwoman Cheryl Worley.
“It was organized to bring the denominations together to let people see that we can all work together,” she added.
Each participating church will decide how to distribute the certificates, which will not be available to the public at any location.
“It’s just so different this year, we wanted to touch as much of the community as we could without having people going in and out (of a location),” said Summers. “At First Baptist, where I go (to church), we gave to the Ellijay firemen and police. We will give the balance to our senior citizens, some of whom are homebound, so we can make sure they get a meal. There are also some couples in our church who, because of COVID, have been out of work for several months so we made sure they got some coupons.”
Five local restaurants are partnering with FHC to accept the meal certificates, noted Worley. They are Mike’s Ellijay Restaurant, Double L Restaurant, Smokehouse Country Grill, White Columns and Chick-fil-A.
Summers said the annual community Thanksgiving meal typically draws almost 1,000 to the First Baptist Fellowship Hall.
“We’ve had as many as 1,200. On average, I’d say there’s about 850 (who attend),” she confirmed.
Summers noted that community Thanksgiving organizers are hopeful they will be able to resume having the in-person meal next year.