The pilgrims would be impressed by the Thanksgiving Eve activities at Quest Community Church. As with the origin of the holiday, the West Liberty church welcomes many to the table.
Nov. 24, the church hosted its regular bimonthly blood drive in the log cabin chapel throughout the afternoon, followed by the evening West Liberty Ministerium Thanksgiving Community Service in the main sanctuary.
“They’re using our church to livestream for the Thanksgiving Eve service,” Pastor Bill Walker said. “But we have a big parking lot, so we’ll be fine. We just put it on our sign. This is a high traffic road — so a lot of people see it.”
Quest has been putting up the sign and rolling out the welcome mat for Community Blood Center blood drives since 2020, when the arrival of COVID-19 made it impossible to continue blood drives at the nearby Green Hills Community senior care facility.
“We said we’d like to do this, and it was no problem at all,” said Pastor Walker. “We also knew that the CBC had its safeguards in place. We just open our doors. It’s easy for us, we love the building being used.”
The CBC honored Quest as a “Crisis Hero” of the pandemic.
At the Thanksgiving Eve blood drive Pastor Walker chatted with Zanesfield donor Season Wall, who made the transition from donating at Green Hills to Quest. West Liberty donor Kim Ramsey also didn’t hesitate to include a blood donation in her busy holiday schedule.
“I come every time,” she said. “I just got done bowling three games with this arm. Tomorrow, I’m cooking a lot.”
Quest also has room for CBC to set up machines for platelet, plasma and double-red cell donations.
Dwayne Boling is a type O negative donor and has dad Danny Boling is type O positive. Type O blood is in high demand and both men changed their regular whole blood donations to double red cell donations.
“We both said, ‘Sure’ if that’s what they wanted,” said Danny, while also discussing his Thanksgiving dinner plans.
“I’m going to my daughter’s for dinner,” said Belle Center resident Edwin Fout as he made a platelet donation.
The daughter who hosted Thanksgiving for his family was Cindee Boyd. Her husband, Scott Boyd, is known in the West Liberty area as the “Iron Man” who survived a horrendous farming accident in August of 2016. In a series of emergency surgeries, he received 108 units of blood, plasma and platelets.
“This all started when my daughter’s husband was in a bad bush hog accident,” Fout said. “He flatlined twice on the helicopter and they pumped blood into him. We started as a way of paying that back.”
Neighbors rallied to donate at the “Iron Man” blood drives held in Scott’s name, including donors at Quest Church. Cindee dedicated herself to helping Scott recover, and donating blood.
“She started it and she asked me to donate,” her father said. “Then they said I’d be good for platelets, and Cindee started the same time I did.”
Scott’s survival is considered a miracle. Thanks to the dedication of his loved ones, doctors and blood donors, he has not missed the recent family holiday gatherings.