Hundreds of people will be spending their Thanksgiving at the Edmundite Missions’ Bosco Nutrition Center with their adopted “family.”

“The people that come in here for Thanksgiving, this is their family, this is their home,” said Bradford Perry, director of nutrition at the Bosco Nutrition Center. “We’re just happy that we have something for them, a place to go and eat.”

Every year for the last 80 years, people in the community that may not have had a place to go for a meal, have been able to call Bosco home, and enjoy a meal surrounded by people that truly care for them.

“We’re just happy to be here and able to serve these folks,” Perry said. “I’m sure everybody gets a good feeling giving these folks [a Thanksgiving] that don’t have the ability to cook a meal, it might give them a glimmer of hope.”

For Thanksgiving, Perry said the staff and volunteers have prepared 45 turkeys, dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie and more to give those in attendance an authentic Thanksgiving meal.

Perry said they’ll serve around 1,000 meals Thursday through the Nutrition Center and Meals of Hope.

“We’re serving a traditional Thanksgiving dinner here at the center from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and we’re also doing a meals of hope delivery to shut-ins, about 300 meals, and we’re also collaborating with the Knights of Columbus who is going to deliver meals to shut-ins also, and they’re going to do about 400 meals,” Perry said. “It’s a task, but because the Missions is able to give us the money to do this work through donations from our donors, who we’re very thankful for, and with a great staff, it’s a lot of work but it’s joyful work and we are more than happy to do it.”

Perry said without the volunteers, community and donors, none of it would be possible.

“We’re thankful for the community and we’re thankful for the donors that give us the money to do this through the missions,” Perry said. “It gives us a really good feeling. It gives us a lot of joy and we get a lot of grace from it, feeding these people that otherwise probably wouldn’t have a meal on Thanksgiving.”

Perry said volunteers come in the day before and day of Thanksgiving to help prepare the meals and serve the community.

“We have several people and groups that come in and volunteer to help us out with different aspect of the operation, whether it’s the meals of hope, packaging them up or serving lunch,” Perry said. “It’s an array of people. There’s no boundaries. There’s rich, there’s poor, there’s educated, there’s uneducated. It’s just a whole group of people and it’s really nice to see those people come together.”