Supper for Seventy
Monday night meals in Swift Current, Sask., create an unlikely community
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BY KRISTIN OSTENSEN, STAFF WRITER
Volunteers Cindy Speir and Ingrid Henneberg prepare a fruit platter for dessert
Full Community Swift Current’s Monday night supper program has been running for two years, growing out of the corps’ past experience with community Christmas dinners and Alpha programs. “We were looking for an opportunity to build full community,” explains Captain Ramsay. “We didn’t want to have just a church dinner with corps people. But we also didn’t want to have just a soup kitchen, where you’ve got people from the corps serving commun-
ity people food and there’s no interaction between the two groups.” About half of those who come to the dinner are from the corps, while the rest come from the community. Some hear about the program through word of mouth, but many find out about it through other Salvation Army programming. “If I know someone who would benefit from the dinner, I invite them to it,” says Thorburn, who works at the corps as a transition support worker, assisting cli-
10 • August 2015 • Salvationist
Photos: Kristin Ostensen
inner starts at 5:30 p.m., but around 3 p.m. people begin to arrive at The Salvation Army Community Church in Swift Current, Sask., waving hello to friends before grabbing a cup of coffee and finding a place on the couch in the lounge. Volunteers have been in the kitchen since morning—chopping vegetables, making sauces, prepping chicken. A second crew arrives mid-afternoon to clean the kitchen and set up tables and chairs. Making dinner for 70 people every Monday night, on a shoestring budget of just $100 a meal, is no easy task. But it’s one that Sylvia Thorburn and her team of volunteers handle with grace, bringing together a group that’s as lively as it is diverse. “We’ve got all kinds of people from the community, across age ranges, ethnicity, income brackets,” says Captain Michael Ramsay, who developed the program with Thorburn while he was serving as the corps officer in Swift Current. “Sometimes you have people sitting across the table, who have been living in the same community for 50 years, and that’s the first time they’ve actually carried on a conversation.” “They want to be a part of something,” adds Thorburn. “For a lot of people who come, this community event is a family unit, a place that’s safe and comforting. That’s what this ministry is all about.”
ents with everything from court appearances to housing. “I sit down with them and they’re my guests for the evening.” Calvin Stricker, a long-time resident of the area, has been coming to the supper since it began. “The food is awesome,” he says. “But more than that, it gets me out of the house. When you’re not working—right now I’m not—you kind of look for every avenue you can to get out.” For Stricker, who does casual work such as mowing lawns and washing