It has been a whirlwind Christmas season for The Salvation Army, but they have worked hard to provide for families in need over the holiday season.
Major Robert Burrell of The Salvation Army says they have distributed about 175 hampers. This is up from about 150 in the previous year. These hampers support 175 children and 260 adults.
This was his first Christmas serving in Drumheller and he was overwhelmed with the incredible support from the community.
“What a tremendous blessing to be able to serve through The Salvation Army in this community. It is unbelievable. I have never seen anything like it in all my years as a minister. The overwhelming support,” he said. “If there was nothing else to attract me to Drumheller, that alone made it worthwhile coming here.”
The Salvation Army also wrapped up a successful Kettle Campaign. While they did not know how it would do in the second year of COVID-19 and were challenged by not having as many volunteers, they are content with the results.
“It has been a good week for kettles. Based on everything I have seen we will meet everything we have budgeted for, for our Christmas giving. “We didn’t anticipate we would hit last year’s numbers because they were just through the roof because I think everybody knew we were right in the middle of the worst part of COVID and we had to shut our kettles down. People in the community just overwhelmed us, came through and blew us away.”
He is grateful for the support from the community during the kettle drive and says The Salvation Army will be there throughout the year to meet the needs of Drumheller residents.
“We already have emergency hampers all lined up ready to go if they need it,” said Burrell.
