Over the past month or so, God put on the hearts of a group of people from Ocean and Monmouth County, to come together and combine their resources in order to bring a little Thanksgiving blessing to families in the Maple Leaf Community of Brick. The congregation at Calvary Presbyterian Church, in Allenwood, filled 15 Thanksgiving Bags full of all non-perishable fixings to make a Thanksgiving day meal extra special. When True Life Church of Brick heard what Calvary was doing for the families at Maple Leaf, the young adult group put together a bag along with two other families. We could have collected more, but we wanted to make sure that we had the families to give them out to…

Thank goodness for Ms. Addie! Addie has been living in the Maple Leaf Community for many years and knows a lot of families! She has also been volunteering with the afterschool program for many years. Between the program, her neighbors and the families that we were able to provide meals for over the summer, 17 families were contacted! Three of those families were through Justin, from True Life, who also lives in the community with his wife.

While the Thanksgiving bags were a huge blessing, we were also contacted over the weekend by Sean & JoAnn from Allaire Community Farm and they told us that they could get turkeys for all the families! The blessings just kept coming!

With Jack & Lori picking up the turkeys, Josephine and Pam bringing the bags from Calvary and True Life, and Ms. Addie’s front lawn acting as the distribution center, all the meals were given out on Tuesday! Family members after family members were showing up and receiving their Thanksgiving day meal!

One of neighbor’s in particular really touched our heart. She is an older lady who came over with a grateful heart and took her bag back into her apartment (while her son took in her turkey). Moments later her door swung open and from her upper front porch we began to hear, “Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much! This is so wonderful! Thank you, thank you!” The joy on her face made our day.

A huge thank you to all who came together to bring the love of Jesus to this community through a wonderful Thanksgiving meal!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!