{"id":71079,"date":"2016-11-11T17:35:39","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T00:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-church-prepares-for-annual-thanksgiving-dinner\/"},"modified":"2016-11-12T00:35:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-12T00:35:39","slug":"cortez-church-prepares-for-annual-thanksgiving-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-church-prepares-for-annual-thanksgiving-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez church prepares for annual Thanksgiving dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Volunteers
Volunteers serve up a Thanksgiving Day dinner at St. Barnabas Church in 2013. From right are Jazmon Clark, Christie Berner, Janice Hansen, Laura White, Michael Maloy and Mike Dohn.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Volunteers are gearing up for Cortez\u2019s annual Thanksgiving Day dinner.<\/p>\n

Grace\u2019s Soup Kitchen, at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, will serve a free dinner from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 24. The church has organized a Thanksgiving dinner for about 15 years. St. Barnabas priest Leigh Waggonersaid she expects about 250 to attend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had people deboning turkeys for weeks now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

More than 50 volunteers have signed up to help cook and serve the meal, which Waggoner promised would be \u201cquite a feast.\u201d As usual, the church will serve turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade gravy and other traditional Thanksgiving side dishes. Volunteers also will deliver to people who are homebound if they sign up for delivery by Wednesday, Nov. 16.<\/p>\n

The event is put on entirely by local volunteers, who prepare the food and set things up or to wait tables and greet guests. Although Grace\u2019s could still use a few more volunteers, especially for Thanksgiving morning, Waggoner said there are always plenty of people in the Cortez area willing to step up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis community is so generous,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople come forward every year with donations of food and money, to volunteer \u2026 it\u2019s an exceptional community in many ways, and one of those ways is that we take care of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Thanksgiving dinner isn\u2019t just about food \u2013 it\u2019s also a way to help neighbors meet one another in a calm, friendly environment. Waggoner said the church started the tradition to give residents a time for people to \u201cbe thankful together,\u201d especially those who didn\u2019t have family to celebrate with. It has consistently drawn large crowds of people from all income levels.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love watching people who typically eat at Grace\u2019s every week eating with people who don\u2019t \u2013 who have means \u2013 people who might not meet each other otherwise,\u201d Waggoner said. \u201cIt\u2019s just great to have everybody together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The church could still use a few more food donations to fill out the tables on Thanksgiving, especially pies. Waggoner expects everything to go smoothly this year, because the church has established a \u201cworking system\u201d that holds few surprises, but she did say they always welcome financial donations.<\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

What: Community Thanksgiving dinner
\n Where: St. Barnabas Episcopal Church,110 W. North St., Cortez
\n When: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 24
\n For more information: To donate, volunteer or sign up for home delivery, call the church office at 970-565-7865. The deadline to request a delivery, if homebound, is Nov. 16.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, volunteers get ready for annual feast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,598,407],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-public-holiday","tag-religion-and-belief"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71079"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}