Albany mission serves up meals, hope

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
First published in print: Friday, December 26, 2008
timesunion.com

ALBANY -- If she had the money, Diane Carroll would have joined family in Florida for Christmas. Instead, the bundled-up 61-year-old sat alone at the Capital City Rescue Mission on Thursday afternoon, scooping mashed potatoes onto a plastic fork.

"I'm kind of down low," said Carroll, who lost her job cleaning hotel rooms in October. "I didn't give my granddaughter anything for Christmas."

Carroll was among the thousands of Albany-area residents who spent Christmas at the South Pearl Street mission, enjoying gifts and food prepared by a small army of volunteers.

The nonprofit Christian organization anticipated serving up to 3,500 meals by the end of the day. To accommodate them, volunteers and staff cooked up some 960 pounds of ham, 1,350 pounds of yams, and 600 pounds of veggies.

Overseeing it all from beneath his tall white hat was executive chef Max Ansong. As workers stirred a huge vat of onions and poked timers into the honey-glazed hams, Ansong recalled his old life as a chef at the Fort Orange Club, where he prepared pts and other fine cuisine for elites like former Gov. George Pataki. The native of Ghana also worked in embassies serving heads of state.

Now he serves the homeless, the needy and the substance-addicted.

"This is something that as a Christian I know is a call from God," he said. "It's not about only telling people about Jesus. It's how you serve them."

The hundreds of volunteers served them more than food Thursday. There was worship: a chapel service and men handing out small green Bibles. The mission is an unabashedly Christian organization that takes no government money, according to its executive director, Perry Jones. It raises about $2 million a year from individuals, churches, corporations and foundations, he said.

There were toys, too. The mission's South End warehouse bustled like a Wal-Mart, with people lining up to get free Christmas presents grouped by gender and age. There were stuffed animals and some 250 basketballs.

"The needy that come to us, most of them don't have money to buy gifts this time of year," Jones said. "Especially with the economy the way it is."

Jones' group also gave away practical stuff, like socks, gloves and hats.

John Fiscarelli was especially grateful for the gloves.

"Should be warmer than these suckers," he said, pulling some ragged gray gloves from his pocket.

The disabled 57-year-old said he gets by on food stamps and soup kitchens, and by scrounging in Dumpsters. The mission offered meals to go Thursday. Fiscarelli had loaded four dinners onto his bicycle.

His next destination was home, where he planned to eat before the food got cold.

Marc Parry can be reached at 454-5057 or by e-mail at mparry@timesunion.com.