Grapevine Center welcomes dozens for annual Thanksgiving dinner
The Grapevine Center, a mental health nonprofit located on North Elm Street in Butler, welcomed dozens of community members for its annual Gratitude & Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday night, Nov. 21, a week before the actual holiday.
“It helps to give them some cheer,” Dee Fields, public relations manager for the Grapevine Center, said of those who came to the meal. “It also helps to buoy their spirits. If you’ve hit a hard place, then coming here to be able to celebrate a holiday gives them hope and cheers them up.”
This year, the Church of God in Connoquenessing Township assisted the Grapevine Center in hosting and organizing the annual feast. According to church volunteer Matthew Karns, the church has spent over a year assisting the Grapevine Center with its various community events.
“We’ve been bringing food and pizzas on Thursdays, and then we do a fellowship hour on Saturdays along with a Bible study,” Karns said. “And this year we stepped up to help them with the Thanksgiving meal. It’s a token of appreciation to the staff for allowing us to be a part of their community.”
“They consider our cause worthy, and they have been volunteering here and helping wherever they can,” Fields said.
She said that she expected a crowd of roughly 75 people to have taken part in the Thanksgiving meal.
Karns said the Church of God funded all of the components of the Thanksgiving meal, and that he and his wife, Kimberly, also did some of the cooking for the event.
“Our pastor wants us to be heavily involved in the community, so the church funds it,” Karns said.
Keith Karns, church pastor and Matthew’s father, delivered the opening invocation before the feast could begin.
Those who took part in the feast were also invited to fill out a “thankful leaf” — a leaf-shaped piece of paper where visitors could write down what they’re most thankful for this season. The Grapevine Center will hang these leaves along the walls of the Drop-in Center.
“So you’ll see these leaves of Thanksgiving all around the walls,” Matthew Karns said. “It makes it festive, and it’s a nice touch to what we’re doing.”
Thankfulness was the theme of the introductory speech that Karns delivered before his father gave the invocation.
“If we look back to where things all started, it started with God sending His son as a gift to the whole world,” he said. “A lot of you know the Scripture, John 3:16. And that Scripture goes all the way down to today. You could think, ‘Wow, it was so long ago, God doesn’t have anything left for us today.’ But He does.”
