Reverend Rob Tart - President of the Durham Rescue Mission
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I would type of a turnout did you get today? You know, it was a big deal. It was one of the biggest we've had, you know, but I think that, you got to go back to 2007, 2008, you know, the economy was really crashing to see numbers like we had today. We had made over 3,000 people here, and I'm not exactly sure that the final campus was still going up, but it was a huge, huge day. It's wonderful to hear that. Now, what did every child who went to this event receive? Everybody got three toys, so we got more, but we tried to make it as easy as we could, you know, some little toys and little more numbers, but the point is that every child got a bag of toys and they got opportunities to close, and the parents got some groceries. We came way up out. I don't know exactly, but about 10,000 garments of clothing, and it was just a huge day. And what's the most amazing, what's happening right now? This is actually our third toy giveaway event in four days, because we went to the mountains on Friday in the Buncombe County, and then we went to Ash County, and we did it there with the hurricane victims, and we gave away and bought the toys and everything. We couldn't do everything there that we do here, but I'd say, well, given away all these toys over four days, periods, about killing women like me, if you don't want them. It certainly is a busy time, certainly, and this is probably more than you've ever done before, considering you also aim to help out folks in the western part of the state, as you mentioned, impacted by Helene. So this really was the largest thing that you've done since you joined the rescue mission. Is that fair to say? Well, that's really great. So I've been in the mission for 29 years, so I mean, this is a big weekend for us too, too. Absolutely. So there are also meals provided today, correct where there are people up and Adam early this morning to prepare them. Actually, we started cooking the last night, and we took the last six o'clock and we cook all night. The volunteers come in and work all night long and change and shift, and we just, when you're feeding in, you know, three thousand people around me a year today, when you feed that many people, it takes a long time to prepare that food. Yeah. There was a lot of work put into it. And this had close to 600 volunteers between it all. 600 volunteers that, and did they work through the night? Complete. Yes, sir. There was some, you know, a handful that worked all night long and nursed those. We got these big, big cookers where we cook the hams and the turkeys on. It's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful turkey. I think we can go into the turkey business if we wanted to. How many, now, for those who don't know, last month when you did Thanksgiving, you had a lot of people. You fed thousands of people. How many turkeys did you provide for them?
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