Wow! We are so thankful for the great response to our appeals for more food for this Saturday’s Thanksgiving Dinner at Crawford Elementary School (1600 Florence St., Aurora 80010). While there is still room for more with many of our food items, we are getting very close to our 900 serving target with most of them. Thank you, Lord! Now we are praying for a God-ordained balance between the supply of food and the demand for food :-).
Interestingly, our biggest need at this point is for people to serve during the 12 to 3 p.m. time frame. Since this year’s format (serving dinner) does not require nearly as many volunteers as needed for our traditional food distribution, we initially asked volunteers to serve for just one hour in order to make room for more people to serve. We also gave volunteering priority to those who were willing to cook and deliver food. This has resulted in the first couple hours of volunteer needs from 10-12 being very well supported and the latter hours, from 12 to 3, not so well supported.
To address this need, we are making two adjustments:
- We are encouraging anyone who would like to participate in Saturday’s dinner (other than cooking and delivering food) to come on down in the noon to 3 p.m. time frame. There are plenty of roles where you can serve.
- We are also encouraging those who have already volunteered to serve for an hour to consider sticking around and serving a little longer, especially after 12 noon. Please note that you are invited to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal and make some new friends while waiting to fill a volunteer role.
If either of these two adjustments appeals or applies to you, please contact our dinner coordinator, Vicki Ekberg, at [email protected] or 303.898.0649. We must respectfully ask that you let Vicki know you are coming. It already promises to be a fairly chaotic day, so please do us the courtesy of contacting Vicki in advance rather than just showing up.
A couple additional notes:
- Parking is available in Crawford’s staff parking lot which is on the east side of the school and accessed off of 17th Avenue. Otherwise, there is lots of street parking around the school.
- As mentioned above, you are encouraged to enjoy some turkey, dressing, pie, etc. before or after serving. We hope this might give you an opportunity to visit with others from our community, but we also want to encourage everyone to be sensitive as you do so. Some will be eager to visit and share about themselves. Others may not be so eager. Please prayerfully seek to follow the Holy Spirit’s agenda (not your own).
Looking forward to sharing a great day with many of you this Saturday.
P.S. Please pray for the weather and that any snow holds off until after 2 p.m. :-).
Finally, I just want to give you a quick heads up that Colorado Gives Day 2018 is just three weeks from tomorrow on Tuesday, December 4th. Colorado Gives Day has become a very important part of ROP’s annual fundraising efforts, which are important in terms of being able to do special events like this Saturday’s Thanksgiving Dinner and all the programs we offer to the needy people of our community on a daily and weekly basis. Stay tuned for more information on this year’s Colorado Gives Day and how you can schedule your CGD donation prior to 12/4.
team serve out of gratitude to God for His many blessings and a desire to share those blessings by serving others. Indeed, most of our Food Bank volunteers are members of our community who originally came as food recipients and later asked if they could give back and say ‘thank you’ by joining our awesome volunteer team. It truly is a special group of people who serve a lot more than food to the hundred or so families that come to the Food Bank each week.
This year, instead of our traditional food distribution, ROP is sponsoring a sit-down dinner for our community, including all of the families of our host, Crawford Elementary School, located just a few blocks from ROP. The basic plan is to serve dinner to about 300 families from 11 am to 2 pm on Saturday, November 17th, in Crawford’s cafeteria.
Anyone interested in participating in the dinner – whether as a cook, a non-cook volunteer or a donor – should email me, Vicki Ekberg (event volunteer coordinator) at 
“Crawford’s homework club is an informal program designed to assist students with their homework. We get together every Friday from 1:15 pm to 2:15 pm. During the homework club children work on their own, and if they need help, they raise their hand and we come and assist them. We do not intent to teach, and there are no specific qualifications. We have about 25 students right now, but we are getting more. We need at least 4 to 6 volunteers per session. But the more we have the better it is.”
