Pantry presses to meat holiday demand

The Maryville Ministry Center food pantry is a very busy place this week.

On Monday, with only one more distribution day left before Thanksgiving, the waiting room was full of clients, and a half-dozen volunteers worked at full speed to stock shelves and fill cartons, bags and boxes with everything from pancake mix to full-course meals.

In addition to its regular function of supplying income-eligible families and individuals with nutritional assistance — groceries and commodities they might not otherwise be able to afford — the pantry takes on a special mission in November.

Its stated goal is to make sure that every family in Nodaway County who wants to share a meal together on or near Thanksgiving, a holiday dedicated to abundance and bounty, has the means to do so.

It's a community effort. As early as October, area schools, churches and civic groups, were conducting food drives to keep pantry shelves stocked through the holiday.

At the Ministry Center itself as many as 40 volunteers a week have been working to package and distribute boxes and cans of instant potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, stuffing, canned fruit, rolls and other foods associated with a traditional Turkey Day feast.

Including, of course, the turkeys.

Ministry Center Board Member Justin Hackney was manhandling frozen turkeys and hams by the cartful Monday so that they could be distributed to clients along with various non-perishable food items.

Families have their choice of either a turkey or one of the 200 hams donated each year by the Maryville Rotary Club.

As for the turkeys, the center purchased some of the birds through the Second Harvest Food Bank. Additional turkeys and hams were donated by private individuals.

With luck, said center volunteer Sharon Shain, the Ministry Center hopes to have enough "special food" on hand to keep providing needy families with a full holiday meal through the end of the month.

Certainly, there has been no lack of demand, though Shain said she thinks client volume at the center is about the same as this time last year.

As of yesterday afternoon, the center had distributed about 160 holiday meal packages, including 31 last Friday and about 25 on Monday.

"The last couple of weeks have been a little overwhelming," Shain said.

Eligible families needing to pick up food at the Ministry Center prior to the holiday have just one more day to do so. The pantry is open from 2-4 p.m. each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.