Viewed from a second story window, volunteers build Thanksgiving boxes. More than 5,000 of these boxes filled with Thanksgiving food will go out on Thanksgiving morning.

It is a quiet Sunday morning at Mission Arlington^®, as Sunday mornings usually are. The crowded streets you can see in the picture to the left are now empty. The Mission family is out across the community teaching the Bible in 349 locations today, so the offices downtown are calm. These peaceful mornings often follow beautiful, but busy Saturdays. Yesterday was no exception.

A Reflection of our Community

Over a thousand volunteers poured into downtown Arlington yesterday to help us get ready for Thanksgiving day.  As the community lends its shoulder to our wheel, the beautiful observation to make is that it is also the very same community which first provided the food.  Not only do you give it, so that we can give it away, but you help us get it ready too.  Our story here is also your story.  We can help so many, because you make it possible. Truly we are “twice-blessed” – once when we receive it from you, and once when we give it away to people in need. Thanks to each of you who pray, give, and help. Your support means so much.

How does it work? A common question people ask is “how so much food gets put together for Thanksgiving Day?” Our first answer is that whatever good happen here only does so by God’s Grace. That’s the plain and unmistakable truth about this place. We could never do this on our own. However, since so many of you have been involved in helping, we thought we would share with you a little bit about the process.

How food is put together for Thanksgiving

Two girls from the Father-Child YMCA day at Mission Arlington help to sort Thanksgiving food.

Sorting Donated Food: For the most part, when people give food, it is unsorted. This is especially true when the food comes in through a drive of some kind.  First, food has to be sorted into “like kind.” All the green beans, corn, etc. are put together in their own box. Yesterday, the YMCA Arlington hosted their annual Father/Child volunteer day. Food Sorting was their task. More than 100 parents and their children came to sort the food. Mission Arlington^® clears a parking lot, and puts up tables shaped to form a large “U.”

Unsorted food is moved across the lot into boxes which are individually labeled. By the time two other groups joined (Burgin Elementary School and Dallas Baptist University Students), this huge team had sorted thousands of pounds of food. They also filled two box trucks full of Thanksgiving food.  This Thanksgiving food was then taken to another place on the Mission Arlington^® campus to go through another process.

Building of Boxes: After food is sorted, it is moved to a separate location.  Groups set up an assembly line where the boxes are filled with Thanksgiving food, everything a family needs (besides the turkey) for a Thanksgiving Day meal.  The turkey will be added to the box on Thanksgiving morning.  Yesterday, due to the volume of help, we were able to put together hundreds of Thanksgiving boxes.

We could only do this, because of the generosity of the people who gave the food, and because of the multitude of people who came to sort and organize the food.  We were tired when we went home last night, but it was the “good kind of tired.”  The community support was truly satisfying in the deepest of ways. Each of us went home to “thank God for his provisions and for you.”

Food for the soul

As with everything we do, our heart is to connect people to the Lord. Food lasts for a moment, but a relationship with Christ is eternal.  Our prayer and hope is that the work we do together on Thanksgiving Day will have lasting results.  Thank you so much

You can make a difference!

If you would like to know more about how to help, click this link.  If you would like to know more about the Thanksgiving Food needed, and/or our Christmas Store coming up, click this link.