La Mesa church provides hot meals to Albuquerque's neediest on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving morning, dozens of volunteers gathered in the halls of La Mesa Presbyterian Church, preparing food and clothing for the less fortunate in the surrounding Northeast Albuquerque neighborhood — a line slowly forming outside.

A sign hung on the chain-link fence outside read: “Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free meal and clothing. Everyone welcome.”

“We’re the only mainline denomination church in the International District, and so we’re kind of ground zero,” said the Rev. Brett Mitchell, the head of the church. “We are where the people who are most in need live.”

For the past three decades, La Mesa has provided warm meals on Thanksgiving Day. Over the years, the effort has grown to include several partnering churches and over a dozen nonprofits.

For the past 25 years, Kizito Wijenje, executive director of the capital master plan for Albuquerque Public Schools, has spent his Thanksgiving volunteering at the event.

“I’ve worked with this church, this community … for many, many years,” Wijenje said. “So it’s not just Thanksgiving, but we work with them on an ongoing basis on community issues.”

While Wijenje was volunteering on his own behalf, he still feels it’s important to represent the district by being there.

“We do a lot of work with all these organizations on behalf of the community,” he said. “There’s a fine line between working for the community and working for your institution.”

One building of the church was dedicated to packing to-go meals, with hotel pans full of hot food lining tables as volunteers rationed them into takeaway boxes that were then handed through a window in the church’s courtyard.

Home from the United States Naval Academy for the holiday, Thomas Fotter was among those helping prepare the warm meals.

“It’s just nice seeing everyone around with a smile on their face, everyone’s super thankful,” he said. “Just being able to spread actual thanks on Thanksgiving is huge.”

On the other end of the courtyard, the chapel was full of clothes laid across pews, organized by size, and those who entered were welcome to fill a bag with garments. Since April, volunteers across the churches and nonprofits partnered with La Mesa had been collecting the various articles.

Folding some of the clothes to be donated was Fotter’s mother.

“It really reaches so many people in the community,” she said. “I was doing parking lot duty, and there were people out there since 6 a.m., and they had set up their baskets waiting for a meal.”

The event fed an estimated 1,600 people through meal deliveries and those who came to the church to pick up their food.

One of those people was Joe Green, who lives in his car. He arrived expecting just a meal, but was grateful for the donated clothing as well.

“This is a bonus, because I just came here to get something to eat,” Green said. “Then I saw people taking care of me, and I asked, and they directed me here.”

He also expressed his gratitude to the volunteers who made the event happen.

“Everybody here is very loving, very caring, very helpful,” Green said. “When I drove up here, and I saw the sign that says ‘everyone’s welcome.’ I’m part of everyone, and so is every human being that’s standing out here.”

The impact was visible across the neighborhood as homeless people were spotted eating on the sidewalks of streets that cross East Central, and others walked with a bag full of clothes in one hand, the takeaway box in the other.

Mitchell also made sure the hot meals reach beyond the La Mesa neighborhood.

“If we still have food, we’re going to send you out to the overpasses and underpasses,” he said. “Because those are the people who aren’t getting information that there’s something here.”

Feast of Hope at La Mesa Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque's International District