It was a busy week at Roosevelt leading up to the Thanksgiving break – parent/teacher conferences, some classes doing benchmark testing, and Thanksgiving projects.

Many of the 6th graders spent their lunch recess making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the homeless. For weeks, 6th grade students have been volunteering their time  once a week after school to make the sandwiches for Street Life Ministries, an organization that serves the homeless population in Redwood City. The students make the sandwiches in Ms. Coyle’s 6th grade classroom and participation is completely voluntary. Ms. Coyle said that in the first weeks, there were just a handful of students making the sandwiches, but now it has grown so much that she has a classroom full of 6th graders after school and even more are asking if they can participate too.

The bread, peanut butter and jelly are all donated. The students make as many sandwiches as they can, but typically it’s between 100 and 200 sandwiches. For Thanksgiving, the students were asked if they could make 400 sandwiches for a Thanksgiving lunch sponsored by Street Life Ministries and PCC. The smell of peanut butter was thick in the air of Room 17 on Friday afternoon, but they managed to make their goal of 400 sandwiches. Ms. Coyle also reached out to the Roosevelt parent community and asked for homemade cookies to be included with the sandwiches and she was rewarded with a table full of cookies!

Many, many thanks go out to all involved, but especially the 6th graders that participated in this huge undertaking!

If you, or anyone in your family would like to volunteer for the Street Life Ministries/PCC Thanksgiving lunch, please read the message below from event coordinator Tony Gapastione for what you need to do:

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day November 22nd between the hours of 11:30am-2pm
(arrival times vary based on role) at Peninsula Community Church.

“My favorite memory of a PCC Thanksgiving is one our long time Street Church members stopping me at the end of the lunch as we were cleaning up. She grabbed my arm and was gushing over the fact that she got to eat on a real plate for Thanksgiving. She said something like, ‘Thank you so much for making us feel so welcomed and treating us like family.'”

In our tenth year of serving the community through Thanksgiving lunch,

I invite you to pass this opportunity on to your friends, neighbors, and ministry connections. As of right now, we really need food donations, decorators, and clean up. Our servers and cookers are limited, so sign up ASAP>

Our PCC Thanksgiving lunch is a great way to serve our community, eat a great meal, and/or serve as a family.

Volunteers are needed to greet guests, serve kids (bouncehouses), cook food, serve food, decorate, work in our clothing closet (Spanish Speakers needed), donate fixings, or simply come and enjoy!

Watch last year’s video to get a glimpse of the experience. http://vimeo.com/32692424

Sign up here: http://wearepcc.com/2012/11/thanksgiving-at-pcc-112212/