By NATE KING
Salina Post
Three hundred and fifty community volunteers and church members braced frigid temperatures on Saturday to serve their community and bring a little Thanksgiving assistance to those in need. The Fifth Annual Ark Salina Thanksgiving Grocery Giveaway brought a total of 600 cars—some arriving as early as 5 a.m. to the Dean Evans Stadium, 851 Markley Road, in Salina.
As cars entered the parking lot that morning, Ark Church Pastor and Salina native, John Huseman, began to pray with volunteers.
"It is more than just food," Huseman said. "It is more than just food. That is what we said as we all prayed together before we served. Because it is very true—we were so excited to be able to provide hope, love, kindness and food to people during this challenging time."
High gasoline and grocery prices are a challenge for many in the community, and families can't necessarily afford to spend more on the groceries around the holidays.
Families pulled out of the parking lot with more than $100 in groceries, including frozen chicken nuggets, bread, a bag of Idaho potatoes, frozen hamburger, peanut butter and jelly, corn, frozen pizzas, and more.
“We just felt that this was the most practical way to show the love of God. People in this town are hurting. Seeing families lined up so early in the morning was sobering - but we wanted to be a smile to help them start their day and greet them with love and understanding," Huseman said.
Line leaders guided and organized the cars into a grid in the parking lot. Once the 15 food service teams were ready to place food in the vehicles, column after column of vehicles made their way through a tunnel of people waving and sharing messages of blessings and kindness.
One of the line leaders who helped out this year was Lori Hall, a member of The Ark Church. Hall and her husband Kelly, have helped with the Thanksgiving Grocery giveaway for five years. The colder temperatures they experienced this year reminded them of the first year that they held the event.
"Pastor John and his wife, Lindsey, had done this down in Texas and so they had a great plan as to how it would be implemented. That first year we had a blizzard," Hall said. "Being in November, it's going to be cold and that does not bother me at all because I live on a farm—but the need kept increasing and our church kept growing and so did the number of volunteers"
Back in 2017 the giveaway was held at Ace Hardware in Salina. With only 100 volunteers, the group helped merely half of the number of families they helped this year. Thanks to community interest and the need for more helpers during the holidays, the volunteer team continues to grow year after year.
"We have an amazing volunteer team. Our mission is to love our city and to serve our city," Hall said.
Hall also voiced her awareness that no matter what your circumstance in life, everyone has a story.
"We don't judge people that make their way through the line, you know, we could all be in that car too at some point in our lives. It gives a perspective to a lot of people that have never been around those situations that there are a lot of people struggling and how we too have days, weeks, months where we struggle," Hall said.
Both Huseman and Hall said that they are trying to make every process of the event as enjoyable and uplifting as possible, one element of that is reducing the wait times families face before receiving food.
"This was the first year we had 15 cars at a time putting food in the cars," Huseman said.
The Ark Church of Salina has grown in recent years and the church's service team participates in serve days in July, mission trips and outreach. For more information about how you can volunteer with The Ark go to https://www.thearksalina.com/.