In honor of his 13th annual Mission:Possible Turkey Fry, country music legend Tracy Lawrence will be looking to fill an estimated 7,000 bellies with a Thanksgiving meal this coming week.
It is, after all, the season of giving, Lawrence told PopCulture.com.
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“It’s a huge event that we put on,” he said. “We usually have about 60 fryers going on at one time and we have everything broken up into groups of ten.”
What started off as a group of friends with one idea to give back on Thanksgiving, turned into an army of hands and hearts to help feed those in need.
“It started off the first year with everyone buying turkeys and bringing their own fryers and borrowing propane tanks from the church,” he explained. “It started off relatively small and then the next year we picked up some sponsorship and then all the volunteers came and it just kind of mushroomed into this whole thing.”
“Some of the people that actually go through the mission, the senior graduates, actually participate and help out during the day so it’s a lot of fun,” he added.
The amount of time spent on this project — even for a man that has seen a lot of personal and professional success — is still stunning.
“I don’t think anybody envisioned we would be doing this 13 years later,” Lawrence added.
The “Time Marches On” singer says the Rescue Mission is an organization he has wanted to be involved with for years prior to his first turkey fry, saying that this project means more to him than most realize, with his personal ties to the non-profit.
“I really wanted to do something for the rescue mission for a long time,” Lawrence said. “I have some personal connection to it through family and we presented them with what we wanted to do and they liked the idea.”
Lawrence doesn’t stop at the Rescue Mission, either — his hands are deep in middle Tennessee around this time of year.
“My wife and I, and our family along with several groups of friends, deliver food in Wilson County on Wednesday and take it to government housing and to people living in the hotels,” he said. “We have a lady that takes us around to deliver to the tent cities, so it goes to a lot of places around here.”
Lawrence recently released his new Christmas album, Frozen In Time, in which a portion of its proceeds will be donated back to the Rescue Mission. Download his album on iTunes.
