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You can almost smell the turkeys cooking and the candied yams steaming with cinnamon and butter. The celery and onions for the dressing soon will be chopped. The green beans and rolls cooked. Delicious pie after delicious pie will be sliced and eaten.

It is early November, but many members of our High Point community are making plans for feeding 5,000-plus people.
The free meals at Thanksgiving and Christmas started about 1994 at Harvest Camp, a camp for drug and alcohol addiction on Eastchester Drive.

Harvest Camp was run by His Laboring Few Biker Ministry, a nondenominational Christian organization now located in Thomasville.

The first meal fed about 300 people. About seven years ago, the ministry had to relocate from John Wesley Camp on Eastchester Drive to Thomasville, and it needed a kitchen and a dining area to serve the Thanksgiving meal.

Tim Carter offered his restaurant, Carter Brothers Barbecue & Ribs, on North Main Street in High Point.

Carter Brothers Restaurant opens up its kitchen for 24 hours for the ministry to use.

Lisa Kennedy coordinates the event. She is a member of His Laboring Few.

Volunteers make the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners possible. They donate, prepare and serve the food. They also deliver the food to homes. For many volunteers, the work is an annual tradition.

Much of the food will be delivered to shut-ins and people who are down on their luck. Volunteers are needed to deliver meals in Thomasville and High Point, as well as other parts of Guilford County. Volunteers are needed to serve, cook and clean up in the restaurant.

“This is a community project,” Kennedy said. “If it wasn’t for the community, we couldn’t do it. We have a good time with everyone working together. We work hard in our ministry to meet the needs of others.”

The ministry needs 100 turkeys to serve 1,000 people and is hoping for donations of turkeys ranging from 10 to 12 pounds, as they are usually more tender. Volunteers can cook 48 turkeys on the rotisserie in about four hours and a smaller number in the oven, which takes much longer. “We work all night before Thanksgiving and Christmas and during those weeks, we cook and freeze some items,” Kennedy said.

Other local businesses, such as the Sweet Shoppe Bakery and Ed Price & Associates Realtors, have helped with the dinners for several years.

Ed Price said he became involved with the ministry about nine years ago when it was at Harvest Camp. He raises funds for the project.

He also does leg work — or should I say, car work. “I think I delivered over 2,500 turkey plates last year,” Price said.
And Kennedy is grateful for the donations that allow people to finish their meals with a dessert.

“Thank God for the Sweet Shoppe Bakery,” Kennedy said. “They provide pie after pie after pie and have done so since 1990 or ’91.”
Judy Cagle and her husband, Ken, run the Sweet Shoppe Bakery. Three generations of their family have worked or are working at the bakery and have participated in the project.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the bakers
come in and work a few hours. They go home to rest a few hours and come back at 7 p.m. Sometimes, the baker may work 24-hours-straight and three or four bakers might work at a time.

“Ken and I feel strongly that our lives are blessed and the pies are just a drop in the bucket,” Judy Cagle said.

Kennedy said sometimes people stop by Carter Brothers on Thanksgiving Day, surprised to see it open. After the volunteers explain, “they start to leave but we tell them to stay, and they make a donation. Some of the guests who come in to eat are alone and just want to be among people. We offer food and live music.”

People should contact His Laboring Few Ministries at 475-2455, Ext. 21, if they want food delivered or if they want
to eat at Carter Brothers,

2305 N. Main St. in High Point. Orders should be in by 4 p.m. Nov. 25.

Moses McMillan is a minister at His Laboring Few. He has delivered meals for a number of years. “Some of the situations are pitiful,” he said. People delivering meals have come back crying at some of the situations they have seen.

“I remember going to one house where a woman and three little children sat on the floor with blankets. This was their meal for that day.”

At another house, he delivered dinners to a diabetic woman who was crying. “She told me 'today is Thanksgiving and tomorrow the doctors are going to take both my legs off.’ ”

At another home, he opened the refrigerator to place an extra meal inside, and found it completely empty.

“Some people just want the meal,” McMillan said. “Others beg you not to leave but to stay and talk.”

The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a Thanksgiving meal. If you would like to help by working in the restaurant, delivering meals or donating turkeys for Thanksgiving or Christmas, contact Kennedy at 869-9948.

If you ask Kennedy why she does this, her answer is, “My reward is in heaven. This is about Jesus and what he would do.”

If you have news of High Point people and events, contact me at mjohnson2@triad.rr.com