Holiday giving thrives despite pandemic

For the last 16 years, the Thompson Falls Community Congregational Church, along with help from the community and other churches, have been helping less fortunate families celebrate Thanksgiving with a traditional meal.

This year, with the COVID-19 regulations and dangers, the Thanksgiving baskets program had to look a little different. Every year, locals can put in requesting aid from the program, simply with their name, address and family size. Each family receives all the necessities to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal including a turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce and more. Each basket delivered comes out to around $60 each, according to the project lead, Ron Reedy.

Reedy said that this year the packaging process had to be done in two separate groups over the course of the Saturday and Sunday. This was done in order to keep volunteers spread out. Reedy said that there are usually dozens of people helping, however this year they had to have less people at a time. Another change was the number of baskets asked for. To Reedy's surprise, there were half the basket requests this year than there were last year, totaling only 60 baskets delivered on Sunday. Last year, according to Pastor Matt Schraeder, who was volunteering to organize baskets, there were nearly one hundred fifteen. "Numbers are down, but we don't have the structure that we usually do," said Reedy. He explained that without utilizing the ordinary organizational system that they have used in past years; this year was a bit hectic. According to Reedy, however, besides some technical malfunctions, the event went off smoothly.

Much of the food was purchased at Thompson Falls Harvest Foods, at a discount, and some came from the food bank. The purchased food had to be ordered earlier this year than other years, to account for COVID-19 related delivery slowdowns. The food was picked up Saturday morning and assembled throughout the day by volunteers from various churches and throughout the community. On Sunday, the baskets were finished, and the turkeys were picked up. Throughout the day, after 2 p.m. volunteers trickled in to help deliver baskets to the Plains side of Thompson Falls all the way up to the opposite end of Heron. Reedy would like to extend a big thank you to the youth group from Clark Fork Christen Fellowship, Don Lake with Harvest Foods and everyone else who came out to volunteer and deliver. With help from private donations from several local businesses, numerous volunteers around the community, and the churches, 60 more families will be able to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.