Mission of Hope serves Yellow Creek students for Christmas

Published 3:49 pm Thursday, December 19, 2019

The halls were full of happy faces as Mission of Hope made their annual Christmas delivery at Yellow Creek School Center in Middlesboro on Thursday.

“We have a lot of needy kids, and a lot of the kids wouldn’t get anything for Christmas if it weren’t for this,” Principal Barbara Warren said. “We are very blessed that they have continued to do this for our kids and the families. We are very appreciative of them. They work all year long to get donations to purchase Christmas gifts for the kids.

“They also provide clothing and food boxes. Every child that we have here is able to go through and get two items and they also provide back-to-school supplies for every child at the beginning of the school year.”

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Mission of Hope adopted Yellow Creek into the charity event 20 years ago.

“We were looking at schools that needed help, especially the younger kids,” Mission of Hope board of directors member Jim Montgomery explained. “We couldn’t take more than five or 10 schools at the beginning and today we serve 28.

“When we first got started it was extremely difficult to walk into the school and say ‘this is what we would like to do’ and the principals would look at us and say ‘are you kidding me?’” he added. “They didn’t believe that we could do it. Sometimes I wondered, could we? But it was all on faith.”

Churches involved in volunteering for the event include Maryville First Baptist, Evarts Baptist Church and Shoreline Church in Knoxville.

“The blessing is to see the kids rejoice over what they’re going to get,” said Joe Hall of Maryville Baptist Church.