North Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - Lumber City Church is delivering "Boxes of Hope" to over 150 families in need in North Tonawanda on Wednesday.
Pastor Chad Rieselman with Lumber City Church says around 600 individuals and 400 children will be receiving food and gifts for the holiday season.
"We've been doing this for 10 years. In the beginning, it was a duplication of the Boxes of Love Ministry that Pastor Eric Johns does with the Dream Center. They asked us to do the same here in North Tonawanda. We found out north Tonawanda being 10.9 square miles modeled much differently," stated Rieselman. So what we do is we match families that enroll every child in their household up to 18-years old, gets a gift and they get some groceries to put in their cupboard for that time when kids are out of school and stuff."
Rieselman explains that they asked people to limit their donations to $25, however, some people chose to give a little extra.
"Putting all those numbers together, the numbers for what we know, the groceries cost, it's about $25,000 worth of stuff that gets delivered in just a couple of hours on Wednesday night," said Rieselman.
On Tuesday, volunteers took time out of their day to finish packing up the rest of the boxes for the big delivery. One of the volunteers, Bobbie Binner with Girl Scout Troop 71226, says she wanted to help because she wants to help address food insecurity in her community.
"We're really excited, because we want to give more back to our community. That's what the Girl Scouts is all about. Our girls voted on it, and now they came in. We got some more girls today, and they're very excited," stated Binner.
