A Breakfast with Smiles and Service

Jordon Speessen shows off her locally renown “Smiling Sunday Pancakes”

A car full of Fannin folk were travelling down Hardscrabble Road when they passed the house of a family that had fallen on hard times.  There wasn’t enough money for the small things like the child’s lost winter hat.  Loneliness was eating at their souls. The Fannin folk reached out to friends, churches, community services groups and businesses in the county.  They gave Christmas stockings with underwear, small toys, candy and hats to the children at Mineral Bluff Headstart/ Pre-K.  The boy got a new winter hat.  Food showed up at the family’s doorstep – a welcomed change from the spaghetti with hotdogs in tomato sauce that had been most of the recent dinners.  For the loneliness, the group made sure the family had places to go where they would feel like family like churches, bar-b-ques, Thanksgiving dinners and Sunday morning breakfasts.  This is what good Samaritans of Fannin County do.

On Sunday, July 31^st, the Good Samaritans will host another of their Sunday breakfasts at the Fannin County Senior Center.  They host these breakfasts on the fifth Sunday of the month.  This year, it means breakfasts in January, May, July and October.

FetchYourNews went to January’s Good Samaritans breakfast to meet some of the volunteers and find out why they want to be part of the Fannin folk that put the lesson of the Samaritan on the way to Jericho to work in everyday life.  Rebecca Hanna has been volunteering with the Good Samaritans for four years.  She started when she first moved to Blue Ridge.  For her, volunteering is a great way to meet the community.  Ms. Hanna states, “When you volunteer, you get to know the community within the first year.  It avoids the time gap when you lose the opportunity to get to know the good things.”

The next Good Samaritan community event will be the Labor Day Bar-B-Que held in downtown Blue Ridge.  It begins with a community worship service on Sunday evening.  Afterwards it is on to the pit to begin smoking the meat for Monday’s barbecue.  On Monday, around noon, the Good Samaritans start plating up the barbecue to the sounds of bluegrass and gospel serenading the audience. The Labor Day Bar-B-Que is Good Samaritan’s primary fundraiser for the year.