Thanksgiving is such a great season because it allows us to pause and reflect on all the many ways we have experienced God’s blessing and favor in the past year. One of the traditions that have been part of Thanksgiving here at Fullerton Free is the boxes of Love collection. We have been sharing with our neighbors in South Fullerton, first through Maple school and later Valencia Park Elementary for 19 years. For 15 of those years we served a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at Maple school for 2000+ guests. Surprisingly for us, the most popular part of the event was the Boxes of Love we would hand out after dinner. People would line up an hour or two before the event so they could get their boxes early. Four years ago we decided to hand out the boxes through the school rather than our event. This eliminated some of the craziness that developed and allowed us to trust the school staff to make sure each family in need was able to get a box. Two years ago we discontinued the lunch in favor of our year around presence through our after school program called United Kids.

Both of the schools have a gospel-centered church that meets in their Multi-Purpose rooms. We allow each church the opportunity to hand out the boxes to families in their congregations that may not be connected with the school. This year we delivered 300 boxes to each of the schools before Thanksgiving. Thank you Boy Scout Troop 93 for your muscles loading and unloading.

Fullerton Free, we appreciate this gesture of neighborly love for these two schools and the low-income families that are touched with this gift. Each box is filled with love and $40 dollars of food and OC United would like to thank the FF church family for its generosity.

Jay Williams