Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Target Turns Woe Into Wonder

My dad read this to me yesterday morning when we were opening gifts. It made my day!

Target turns woe into wonder

News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) - News B6
Kathryn Their, The Charlotte Observer
Published: December 25, 2007

Jody Schwandt, executive director of the Mooresville Soup Kitchen, got the call at 8:30 a.m. Christmas Eve.

Would the soup kitchen like some food? Not just some food, but every frozen food item at the SuperTarget in Mooresville -- from pork loins to chicken to vegetables and frozen dinners.

It needed to be taken quickly. A computer malfunction had shut the store's entire freezer system, including storage walk-in freezers in back and display cases out front.

Schwandt and folks from First Baptist Church, which houses the soup kitchen, cobbled together a volunteer crew Monday to load, haul and sort the food.

The group twice filled two 18-foot-long commercial trucks lent by church member Randy Marion, owner of area car dealerships. Volunteers also made one trip in the church van with a trailer behind it.

"If it's frozen and they sell it at Target, we got a little bit of it," said Joe Cullen, the church's Baptist Men director.

Most of the food will stock the soup kitchen's freezers for weeks to come. Food that the soup kitchen can't use was distributed to families in need from other area churches.

Morrows Chapel United Methodist Church took frozen waffles for the Sunday breakfasts it serves to churchgoers without enough food at home.

"By thinking pretty quick," Cullen said, "[the store] was really able to bless a lot of people at Christmas time."

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