Volunteer Shauna Simmonds. left, dishes out yams to Rose Bickle of Burlington Township during the second annual Burlington Seventh Day Adventist Church community celebration at the Quaker Meeting House and Conference Center on High Street on Wednesday.
Posted: Thursday, November 17, 2011 5:45 am | Updated: 12:00 pm, Thu Nov 17, 2011.
Members of the Burlington Seventh-Day Adventist Church cooked and served a traditional turkey meal at the Burlington Quaker Meetinghouse and Conference Center on High Street on Wednesday.
Apron-clad volunteers smiled and dished up the buffet while folks of all walks of life dug into the holiday feast and peeked into gift bags filled with toiletries and other essentials. Medical screenings and chair massages, new features this year, were also part of the package.
Friends Rose Bickle and Jounita McHugh were impressed.
“Everything was delicious,” said Bickle, of Burlington Township, adding that she’d gotten her blood sugar tested.
McHugh, of Lumberton, just stuck to the savory cuisine.
“If I’d have gotten a chair massage, I’d have fallen asleep,” she said.
The meal was made possible by $3,000 collected from Adventist members and 25 cheesecakes donated by Mother’s Kitchen, a bakery on Veterans Drive. The spacious dining room and professional kitchen at the meetinghouse served as the ideal venue.
Adventist Pastor Daniel Duffis worked the room, grinning and taking candid digital photos. Duffis said the community meal carries out the helping-hands vision of the church, which has operated on Conover Street for 120 years.
“We think this is really reaching out. For some people, it’s the only Thanksgiving they’ll get,” he said.
Duffis said that unlike corporate-funded charities, the meal was paid entirely by donations from the church’s 75 members.
They also gave freely of manpower. Event coordinator Marilyn Mapp of Burlington Township said 25 volunteers, including teenagers, helped prepare and serve the meal, and that a committee was assigned to take care of shopping for the food and getting the word out.
“My brothers and sisters at church are really, really good. A major difference this year is the youth involvement,” said Mapp, a church member for nine years.
Attendance was down from last year’s 200 visitors, likely because of the rainy weather, she said.
Still, nothing went to waste as the servers switched from serving hot plates to packing the extras in to-go boxes.
The Meetinghouse and Conference Center, which has lodging space in addition to cooking and dining facilities, frequently hosts traveling groups and other nonprofits of different faiths. Center director Carol Strawson spoke of the excitement that preceded the much-needed brunch.
“People were knocking on the door yesterday, asking about it,” Strawson said. “It’s really wonderful.”
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