The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

THE Salvation Army hosted more than 500 senior citizens yesterday during their annual holiday season Seniors and Friends Luncheon.

Under a tent outside the Army’s headquarters on Mackey Street, the diners were treated to a full Christmas meal and also given a food parcel to take home.

Salvation Army Advisory Board chairperson Judy Munroe said the meals were excellent, and noted that for some of the guests, it will be the only holiday dinner this year.

She said: “After dinner each person will receive a bag that they will be able to take home and hopefully cook another Christmas dinner for themselves.

“It’s also a time for some of them to have some fun. They’re entertained by the police band and they will sing some carols and you’ll see them dancing,” she said.

“I think it’s important that these persons know that somebody’s thinking of them and somebody remembers them. For some of them, this is the only Christmas dinner that they’re going to have.”

The Royal Bahamas Police Force Band was there to provide entertainment as around 70 volunteers from the Salvation Army, Urban Renewal, the Royal Bank of Canada, and Atlantis served the hundreds of meals prepared by the Army’s Advisory Board.

Divisional Commander for Salvation Army Major Lester Ferguson said the event was a way of “expressing the love” that the holiday season is meant to bring.

“A lot of our elderly people are lonely and neglected and live on very little. This is just a small way of us showing our appreciation to them, sharing the Christmas spirit,” he said. “We are catering for 500 and of course we have others who are just in the Grants Town community – we have another 100 or so we will be catering to there.

“The elderly people here, they look forward to this. They don’t get many occasions to go out and to fellowship and to celebrate. This is a great outing for them,” he said.

“The mission of the Salvation Army is to reach out to the needy, to the less fortunate, to the elderly, to the disadvantaged - this ties in nicely with what we do all year round. This is just one of the events that we do on a day to day basis, right throughout out the year.”