With the Christmas season now in full swing, Spirit and Truth Church in Odessa has created a unique way for families to have fun and benefit the West Texas Food Bank.
This Saturday, Spirit and Truth Church will have its first ever Gingerbread Extravaganza, which will benefit the West Texas Food Bank.
For $35 per gingerbread house, families can decorate with all sorts of different candies, snack on cookies with coffee or hot chocolate and take pictures in the picture booth and enjoy Christmas music.
Half of the registration fee will go to the West Texas Food Bank.
“It’s something that we wanted to do to support the food bank but it’s also Christmas season,” Spirit and Truth Pastor Russell Nebhut said. “It offers families something fun to do. Decorating gingerbread houses is something that a lot of kids like to do. Parents can do it with their kids. Grandparents can do it with their grandkids and etc. They come to the food bank, sit down with their houses and all their decorating materials are there. They decorate their houses. There’ll be Christmas music playing.”
The event will take place from 10 a.m.-noon Saturday at the West Texas Food Bank.
“They take their gingerbread houses home with them,” Nebhut said. “All the proceeds and any profit from this event go to the food bank. Most people don’t understand that $1 will feed five people at the food bank. If we can actually sell 50 houses purchased, it’ll give food to a lot of people.”
Russell and his wife Stephanie recently moved back to Odessa after spending time in El Paso.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done an event like this.
“(Stephanie) is creative and has done this before in the past with different places,” Russell said. “It’s always a fun event for families and we’re big on doing family-oriented events so that mom, dad and kids and grandparents can spend quality time together. They’re not just in front of a TV. They’re doing something fun together. We’re new back in town. We were in Odessa for five years. We went to El Paso and then came back to Odessa to start a new church and we wanted to do something fun for our first Christmas back that families can take part in.”
Stephanie talked about how the idea of doing this event came about.
“We did something similar when we were at a church in El Paso. We actually raised money for the Child Advocacy Center there,” Stephanie said. “We moved here and it was a successful event and we realized how fun it was for families to get together and do something for the community while having fun themselves. We saw the need here and saw that one dollar can feed five people through the food bank and we wanted to promote the food bank and do something fun for Christmas for families.”
Those who are interested in taking part will need to go online to register at spiritandtruthodessa.org.
“They do need to register because we want to make sure that there are gingerbread houses for everybody,” Russell said. “There’s limited space so we can do 50 families, basically. They can go to our church webpage and there’s link to register and that’s spirtandtruthodessa.org. or they can go to eventbrite.com and the link to that page takes you to that page and it’s a registration thing for community events and you just have to find the Spirit and Truth Gingerbread House Extravaganza. The registration is $35. Half of that amount goes to the food bank.”
Russell and his wife have been involved with distributing food with different churches and this is something they wanted to do to help the West Texas Food Bank.
“I have seen families come especially in the midst of COVID after being laid off, coming to get groceries,” Russell said. “There’s nothing like seeing the expression on somebody’s face, especially a mom when she knows she’ll have groceries for her kids. When you can give someone enough money for food for a week, there’s an expression in their smile that you’re not going to get anywhere else. We may not be able to pay their car bills but there’s no reason why anyone shouldn’t be able to feed their kids.”
If you go
- What: Gingerbread House Extravaganza.
- When: 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.
- Where: West Texas Food Bank, 411 South Pagewood Avenue.
- Fee: $35.
- Where to register: spiritandtruthodessa.org
