Most people celebrate Thanksgiving around the dinner table with family and friends. But for a person without a home, it can be difficult—away from family and friends, reflecting on broken promises, people they have let down and hearts they have broken.

 

With your help Thanksgiving can be different for hungry and homeless men, women and children in the community as their lives are touched through the Great Thanksgiving Banquet. While there are many without homes to go to, there is a place where the door is always open—Nashville Rescue Mission.

 

While most come for the delicious Thanksgiving meal, your gifts allow the Mission to greet everyone like family. Tables are covered with tablecloths. Walls are decorated with messages of hope. Music is softly playing in the background. Thoughtful steps are taken to make this an extraordinary day—filled with special memories for those who call the Mission their home.

 

“Thanks to Tracy Lawrence
and his annual turkey fry, serving fried turkey has become a Thanksgiving tradition at the Mission,” says Tony Baxter, food services director. “We will also serve many of the traditional Thanksgiving Day foods, like dressing, creamed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and lots of pumpkin pie. It might not be the same as having Thanksgiving dinner at home, but it’s pretty close.”

 

With your help, over 5,500 meals will
be served to Nashville’s homeless this Thanksgiving. Volunteers
will arrive early. Every turkey carved, every potato chopped, every pie sliced.

 

“At Nashville Rescue Mission, we welcome those who are hurting, homeless and alone with the love of Christ,” says Glenn Cranfield, president and CEO. “It might start with a meal, but after they’ve been fed, we want them to leave with something much greater—
hope for a brighter future through Jesus Christ.”

 

“I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving this year,” says Rick. For him, being homeless on Thanksgiving had only welled up feelings of pity and spite inside of him. But this year he’s excited to graduate from the Life Recovery Program the day before Thanksgiving and is especially thankful for all he has learned during his recovery.

 

“It’s not just about serving them a Thanksgiving meal,” says Cranfield. “This meal just might be the first step in reaching a man or woman struggling with homelessness or in the grip of ad- diction or other life-debilitating situation and guiding them down a new path. It’s an opportunity to show them there is hope.”

 

You can give the gift of hope this Thanksgiving.