A local outreach ministry to care for those who lose their homes to fire took on a whole new purpose this year.
Love & Harvest of Souls Global Ministries, which is led by Elder Donny and Evangelist Deloris McCormick, sponsored a dinner for those families Wednesday at The Loft Restaurant inside of the Reserve in downtown Laurel.
Evangelist McCormick described Love & Harvest, which began about six years ago, as a home-based outreach ministry that is not affiliated with any church.
“What we do is when we see a need, we go out and try to help them as we’re led,” she said. “We started last year getting the names of families who lost their homes from the American Red Cross.”
McCormick said the Program to Support Fire Family Victims delivers clothing items and children’s toys to those families during the holidays.
“We get personal contributions from different businesses to purchase the items,” she said. “Most of them know us from years of doing stuff in the community. A lot of them volunteer to adopt a family from us.”
McCormick said she and her husband approached Jon and Lori Diggett, owners of the new Loft Restaurant, for one of those contributions. That chance meeting led to Wednesday evening’s dinner.
“We went by The Loft and talked to Mr. Jon there,” she said. “We sat down and talked to him and he told us to come back with more information that next Saturday.”
McCormick said that when the couple returned to the restaurant, Diggett had a proposal of his own.
“He said ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Since most of these families are burned out and displaced, we’ll feed them a Christmas dinner,’” McCormick recalled. “He also said that if we would bring him about 25 to 30 children, he would purchase gifts and have them ready as well. It was just a blessing.”
When reached by phone, Lori Diggett said the dinner was just something they decided to have for the families victimized by fire.
“They (the McCormicks) came by originally asking for donations to go towards purchasing a gift for the kids,” she said. “We just decided that the dinner would be something nice to have for them. We got Bob Hobbs of Kim’s Toyota to be Santa Claus and our patrons donated money and gifts.”
Diggett said that she and her husband were given a wish list of what gifts each child would want for Christmas.
“When people brought gifts by, we marked them off the list,” she said. “We used the money to get the remaining gifts on the list. Plus, we had the Christmas dinner and dessert.”
Diggett, a Laurel native, said she and her husband Jon, who is originally from Connecticut, opened The Loft Restaurant roughly two months ago.
“He traveled the world playing golf all of his life,” she said. “This is something that he has always wanted to do... have a restaurant.”
Peggy Owens-Mansfield, executive director of the Pine Belt Chapter of the American Red Cross, said the organization was glad to serve as a co-sponsor for the event.
“We helped them round up the kids that were going,” she said. “I think it’s wonderful that The Loft elected to do this. Any time that a family loses their home to fire is very stressful, especially close to a holiday.”
Owens-Mansfield said the Christmas dinner helped to “normalize things a little bit.”
“It makes them feel really special, which they are,” she said. “I think that it was a great event. I’m pleased. The Diggetts are such really sweet, warm people.”
For more information or to donate, contact the Pine Belt Chapter of the American Red Cross at 601-426-9071.
Local News
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