Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving 2008 dawned peacefully. Sarah, Sus and I gathered all our goodies and headed off to church where our adopted Thanksgiving was taking place. When we got there we dug right in and peeled potatoes, set up tables and chairs, helped with the turkeys, played board games and were generally having a terrific time.

A couple hours into the festivities I took a walk with a couple others to deliver some food to one of the regulars of the Tuesday homeless lunch. In the parking lot we ran into a man who asked if we were serving dinner. We answered no, said we were sorry an walked away. We assumed he left. A few minutes later The person I was with got a phone call from someone at the church, the man had been let in by someone who didn't know he wasn't supposed to be there and was refusing to leave. We hurried back to the church and sure enough found the man from the parking lot in the kitchen. He was told to leave or the police would be called, he said go ahead and call him, he said he wanted to tell them we wouldn't feed him.

One of the people there had to physically remove him, we called security and it was dealt with and after the fact I found out the kids had locked themselves in the other room, which was a good move on their part, they are smart kids :-)

It was sad but Sarah and the others offered to give him food from the Tuesday lunch cupboard and send him on his way. He wanted our food. He wanted to stay. We couldn't let him stay, it wasn't responsible. No one knew him or even recognized him and we had no way of knowing if he had a weapon of any kind.

Sarah had the most contact with him as she was mashing potatoes when he arrived and he kept telling her he was a "hungry tiger"

We all decided to put the incident behind us and have a good day which we did, more people came, 25 in all and they all brought food - lots of it!

It was fantastic gathering of people who otherwise wouldn't have been together, people who found a way to celebrate and share something special with friends, make new ones and be together giving thanks for another year.