After a busy year, the Riverside Mission is hosting its annual Thanksgiving Community Meal Friday, October 8th.

For at least 10 years, Riverside mission has been hosting 3-holiday dinners throughout the year, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

All of the food is donated by local individuals and businesses and is usually an event where people in the community come together to enjoy a hot meal and mingle.

However, this Thanksgiving dinner will be handed out in the style of take-out due to the current fourth wave of COVID-19.

Executive Director of Souls Harbor Rescue and Owner of Riverside Joe Miller says, "In the middle of the fourth-wave we also have to make sure everyone is safe as best as we can. So, whether that's volunteers or staff, or the guests themselves, we try to serve in the safest manner possible."

People can grab a hot turkey dinner from the Riverside Mission building at 36, 40, and 42 Manitoba Street and food will be served between 3 pm and 5 pm.

Riverside Mission not only does holiday meals, but they help provide food and shelter for the community throughout the year.

"There are a couple of stats that I think people need to know, and one of them is that in the last year, Riverside Mission served over 21,000 meals... that doesn't even count the holiday meals," says Miller.

Along with that, they also provided about 500 nights of emergency shelter.

Miller also told Discover Moose Jaw that Riverside Mission had to call on the community a few months ago because they were low on food, and Moose Jaw's response was explosive.

Within a short amount of time, Riverside Mission went from having almost no food to having too much food for its freezers and $20,000.

There was so much that Riverside Mission donated the extra food and money to other organizations around Saskatchewan.

Plans for a new building are being finalized to start within April and June of next year.

The new building is a multi-million dollar project and will allow the organization to grow and provide other public services.

Check in with the Discover Moose Jaw website for updates.