I am beyond excited about our November Urban Hero project for Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels in the Twin Cities! Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels (independent of the Meals On Wheels Association of America) quickly became one of my family’s favorite Thanksgiving traditions…quite possibly our favorite tradition of the year.

We learned about Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels 9 years ago while looking for ways for our young family to serve; we had just had our youngest child and were searching for opportunities where our children would get to meet and see the faces of the people they were impacting. So the following Thanksgiving, we woke up in the middle of the night at 5am, bundled up our littles and headed to St. Paul to be a part of the action. We arrived and joined hundreds of others in the school gym to wait for our routes and meals to deliver. In line, I learned the story behind how this all started…

Barb and Bill were sophomores at two local high schools in 1970. Just before Thanksgiving, they learned of 3 struggling families who did not have the means to provide a Thanksgiving meal for their families. So Barb and Bill (I mentioned they were teenagers, right!?), stayed up all night and cooked each of these families a Thanksgiving meal. The following year, they were aware of more struggling families and cooked even more meals. Forty four years later, they have continued this amazing tradition of serving a traditional Thanksgiving meal to less fortunate families in our community, this year delivering 15,000 meals! My favorite part about all of it?? No one signs up ahead of time to help, yet HUNDREDS of people start showing up at 2:30am (which is seriously the middle of the night!!) to start packing food into boxes and HUNDREDS more show up before dawn to pick up food boxes and routes to deliver the meals. And somehow, each year, enough people show up to get the job done. AMAZING. These two are an incredible example of how we all can make a difference.

So as we were planning our November subscription project, Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels came to mind. I was sure they were probably covered with food donations and such but thought I would call and see if there was any need that we could help with. Bill was so happy to hear from us. This year a major grocer in MN went out of business. This grocer had graciously donated the pumpkin pies for many years past and Bill hadn’t had any luck with finding a new donor. And seriously…what is a good Thanksgiving meal without a slice of pumpkin pie??

Just to give a visual on how amazing this day is, here is a photo from this Thanksgiving morning. Look at all the people who just showed up to help!!

Thank you to our UrbanHeroes for partnering with us. Because of your subscriptions, 15,000 people are going to enjoy a slice of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving that otherwise wouldn’t have! We hope you loved your halo this month!