Elks host community Christmas meal
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald A child looks on as a meal is served during the annual Christmas Community Meal on Wednesday, organized by First Choice Services and hosted at the Elks Club in Moses Lake.
MOSES LAKE — The man with the dog had finished his meal when Jennifer Killian sat down next to him.
“If you can hang around until we close, we’ll get a bone for your dog and a couple of meals to go,” Killian said.
“That would be good,” said the man, who has been living in his van in Moses Lake for the last several weeks. “I parked out in back, to try and get a little warmth from the sun.”
“We’re glad you’re here,” Killian said before she stood up.
She had to get back to the food line, where she was spooning out scalloped potatoes for the community Christmas meal at the Elks Club on Wednesday.
Killian is the Moses Lake director of First Choice Services, a small company that also has an office in Vancouver, Wash., that helps people with disabilities find and keep jobs in the community.
People with First Choice cook the meal, Walmart helps with food donations, volunteers from the community serve it (this year it was ham, scalloped potatoes and beans), and the Elks Club provides the venue. Santa and Mrs. Claus were scheduled to appear. Anyone who walks through the door from noon to 3 p.m. is welcome, Killian said.
“It’s pretty simple, and we try to keep it simple,” Killian said. “We get a whole bunch of people, people from the community who come to help us.”
The Christmas meal grew out of the Community Thanksgiving meal, though Killian said it has not quite caught on the way the Thanksgiving meal has.
“It hasn’t built up like the Thanksgiving dinner. We served about 150 last year,” she said. “We serve 400-500 at Thanksgiving. So, it just depends.”
The Christmas community meal as a tradition is only four years old, and it takes time for things to anchor themselves deeply in a community. But that does not deter people who want to serve their neighbors.
“We’re all about getting out in the community,” said Barry Lawson of Windemere Realty. “We donate a portion of our closings to help. This is important to us.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.