Saint John’s Lutheran Church brought Thanksgiving dinner to 500 people.

A small group of 20 people from the church joined together about four months ago to begin planning for the day of service, according to Pastor Matthew Sorenson.

“What does it look like if God feeds 500 people in Farmville?” Sorenson said he asked his team when they first began planning. “It looks like about 20 different churches coming together.”

Companies, Boy Scouts, high school students and various other groups and individuals from the community helped out, too.

“It wasn’t one person, it wasn’t one church. It was an army of people turning out from all over the place to do this in a relatively easy way,” Sorenson said.

Though originally planning to cook for 500 people, only 465 individuals officially signed up to receive meals. During the process, the volunteers had extra food, with their meal count exceeding 500.

“We shared some of those extra ones with people in the community who are of need,” Sorenson said. “They weren’t even signed up — we just delivered them to them.”

They brought much of the extra food to people such as dispatchers at the police department who had to work through Thanksgiving Day.

In preparation for the event, they received donated bags from Kroger, containers from Kentucky Fried Chicken, items from Food Lion and help from Marion’s Bi-Rite with purchasing turkeys at a good deal, Sorenson said. Applebee’s helped the church fundraise for the event, he said.

FACES, STEPS and Piedmont Senior Resources, as well as other agencies, helped identify who might have been in need of a meal.

The church advertised throughout town and with the Farmville Area Ministerial Association for volunteers. Come Wednesday morning, they received more than they could have hoped for, Sorenson said.

He said there were at least 40 volunteers who came to help prepare the cold items, such as cranberries, rolls and pumpkin pies for deliveries the next day.

The church thought the task would take from 9 a.m.-6 p.m., but with the influx of volunteers, they were done by 10:30 a.m.

“It was people from all over the place, from all those different churches, from Boy Scouts from Fuqua; we had the same thing happen on Thanksgiving morning,” Sorenson said.

Another 40 people arrived at the church to finish packing and preparing the meals at 6 a.m. Thursday. A mere two hours later, the group finished with more meals packaged than they needed.

“In the midst of it Thursday morning, there were a couple of moments when we said there may not be enough turkey,” Sorenson said, yet there was plenty of food to go around.

By the time the next wave of volunteers arrived an hour later, the first group had cleaned the kitchen.

The group of 50 volunteers who offered to deliver the meals was split into groups of two and three.

Sorenson gave those volunteers a different challenge.

“We’ve got the food and know that people are going to be blessed by the food, but you are going to people in a lot of cases who are by themselves on a holiday and they’re lonely, so my challenge for the drivers was ‘Will you ask them what their name is.’ ‘Will you ask them what’s going on with their life.’ ‘Will you talk to them for a little bit and share your own story with them?’”

He asked the volunteers to say a prayer for them after they said good-bye.

“I had drivers coming back after delivering, with just tears in their eyes, thanking me for the opportunity they had to go meet these people and to be a part of their life,” he said. “I know that it was a blessing for everyone who participated, for the people who were fed, but all the volunteers who participated, too.”

Saint John’s Lutheran plans to distribute meals to those in need again next year.