The last time Christmas fell on a Tuesday was in 2012. At that time, we had a fairly new feeding program delivering a meal to Tent City 3 every Tuesday night. We decided to offer a Christmas feast at St. Dunstan’s Church that year, borrowing four large vans to bring guests from the tent encampment to the church. The Mission to Seafarers provided vans and drivers and ditty bags for all our guests. Holy Cross Redmond loaned us two more vans and we brought over 60 people to the church for Christmas dinner.
That experience of feeding people at the church inspired us to create our Community Dinner program. Today we feed 130 to 180 meals every Tuesday at the church and deliver meals to 5 different tent encampments, for over 300 meals every week.
Well, Christmas is on a Tuesday again this year and we are throwing another Christmas celebration. We are signing up volunteers to help prepare, serve and clean up. We have invited our Community Dinner guests each of the past three weeks to come to Christmas dinner and to tell their friends. That’s what happens at St. Dunstan’s Church, the Church that Feeds People.
In addition to the Christmas feast, we have three beautiful Christmas services planned:
- Christmas Eve at 4:00 PM our Children will delight us with a Pageant. The Pageant is a chance to sing the most beloved of Christmas carols and enjoy Holy Communion before going off to our family gatherings.
- Christmas Eve at 10:00 PM at the Henry Chapel in the Highlands begins with wonderful music, including organ, choir, flute, clarinet, saxophone and trombone, and continues with a beautiful service of Holy Eucharist to celebrate the birth of the Christ child.
- Christmas Day at 10:00 AM we will celebrate Holy Eucharist with more beloved carols.
Last year the late Christmas service at the Henry Chapel got snowed out! The forecast this year is for warmer weather with some rain but no snow. If by some fluke of nature, we get another snow storm on Christmas eve, we will move the service to St. Dunstan’s church.
Yours in Christ,
David+