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A peaceful white Christmas in Durango

Manna Soup Kitchen dishes out 69,000 meals in 2014

Durangoans unwrapped gifts, worshipped, sledded, skied, broke bread together and made quick trips to the grocery store for whipped cream Thursday. In other words, it was a typical Christmas Day in Southwest Colorado.

While the majority of worship services in town take place Christmas Eve, a few churches marked the day itself. About 20 people gathered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church for a quiet Service of Holy Communion led by the Rev. Bob Pope.

“I’ve always liked the Christmas Day service with its silence,” he said. “There’s no child with angel wings, no one carrying in a baby Jesus doll, just quiet worship.”

After readings from Isaiah, the Book of Titus and, of course, the recounting of the story of Jesus’ birth from the book of Luke, Pope spoke about the meaning of the day.

“I always struggled with the idea of an infant, just a baby,” he said. “And then I heard this line in a song lyric: ‘Mary, did you know when you kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face of God?’ And then I understood.”

Faithful churchgoers sometimes disparage those who attend services only on major holidays. Pope’s father was one of them, he said.

“My father hated Christmas Eve services, because they were full of people who only went to church for Christmas and Easter,” he said. “I didn’t remind him that when I was little, he only went on Christmas and Easter. Billy Graham once said it’s better to take a bath once in a while than not at all. Even just going to church for Christmas opens the door for God to enter.”

At Manna Soup Kitchen, festivities were a little lower key than in previous years but nonetheless celebratory. About 300 guests arrived to a room decorated with poinsettias, greenery and giant Christmas tree bulbs.

Jessica Tarr came with her family, including her daughter, Alice Flores, 3, and her sister, Cheyanne Tarr, 15.

“The food’s pretty good,” Cheyanne said. “And it’s good to be here with my family.”

Kitchen manager Thomas Bentley designed a menu just like mom used to make: turkey, ham, dressing, mashed and sweet potatoes, cranberries and that universal constant, the green bean casserole.

Kristi Anderson, her husband, Jeremy, and daughter, Risa, spent all day Christmas Eve baking desserts in the new Culinary Kitchen. They made apple and pumpkin pies, gingerbread cake, brownies and decorated tree-shaped sugar cookies.

“And they made it all from scratch,” Bentley said. “The pie crust, the cake, the icing for the cookies.”

Teri Perryman and her children, RJ Parke and Shayna Perryman, were volunteering for the second year. Last year, it was a way to get through the first holiday without her husband and their father, Monty Perryman, who died in October 2013. He was the big holiday person in their family, which made Christmas even more difficult, they said.

“It was better to do something and not just sit around and feel sad,” Parke said. “An idle mind is a dangerous mind. There’s great energy here, and we’re surrounded by smiles.”

Teri Perryman works at Mercury Payment Systems and volunteers at Manna with a group from work during the year.

“They take pretty average stuff and make wonderful meals here,” she said. “The people who have the least seem to appreciate it the most.”

One might think it would be difficult to recruit volunteers on Christmas Day, but in fact, Manna has to turn volunteers away because so many Durangoans step up, said Lou Kiene, president of the soup kitchen’s board of directors. He said attendees at the Christmas feast were a mix of longtime clients and newcomers.

“There’s no typical client,” he said. “We get a lot of senior citizens who come here as an alternative to the (Durango/La Plata County) Senior Center, where lunch costs $4. When you’re just hanging on by your fingernails and trying to survive on Social Security, that can be a lot.”

Many seniors also come to socialize, he said, and Manna is seeing a lot of young families, too.

“Durango can be such a tough town economically,” Teri Perryman said, noticing all the different people dining at Manna. “It’s remarkable that the community keeps this going.”

The people who normally donated toys to be given away at the dinner did not do so this year, but that might be all for the good.

“A lot of places do toys,” volunteer Gay Kiene said. “Manna does food really well.”

Washington state corporation Zumiez, which has a store at the Durango Mall, donated about 30 boxes of coats, hats, gloves, socks and blankets, many of them in children’s sizes. Many were given away at the party, and Manna saved some to give to clients as the winter progresses.

“It’s kind of a mystery gift they’ve been sending for the last several years,” Manna Executive Director Kathy Tonnessen said. “We didn’t submit a grant, and the store at the mall doesn’t know anything about it. We just get a call from a company that says they’re ‘delivering for Zumiez, and is such and such a time OK for delivery?’ So, we accept them gratefully, and I send the company a thank-you note.”

One of Tonnessen’s gifts this season is the number of meals served this year, 69,000, is pretty close to what they did in 2013.

“This may be the first year we haven’t gone up,” she said. “Maybe things really are getting better.”

abutler@durangoherald.com



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