It is the season of giving, and New Heights Baptist Church took it to heart by hosting its second annual community pie drive on Saturday, November 22.

For another year, volunteers excitedly gathered at Newtown Community Center throughout the early morning and afternoon, ready to 60 bake apple pies for local residents in need. People of all ages worked in the community center’s meeting room connected to the kitchen, where they worked at different stations.

Each station tackled a different stage of the pie-baking process, from peeling apples to mixing together all of the necessary ingredients. Everything, minus making the dough itself, was done by hand.

Afterwards, the pies went into the kitchen’s oven, coming out golden brown and ready to be hand-delivered.

New Heights Baptist Church member and outreach coordinator Amy Jeanfaivre, who once again organized the event with her sister-in-law Callie Jeanfaivre, said over 50 volunteers signed up to help with the pie drive. So many people showed up, in fact, that they finished making all of the pies around noon.

“I mean, we’re gonna have to double our efforts next year, we had so many volunteers,” Amy said.

In the days leading up to the pie drive, New Heights Baptist Church encouraged its members to share the names and addresses of friends, family members, coworkers, or others in the area in need of support and encouragement.

“It can be really hard around the holidays,” Amy said. “People are hurting. Maybe they know someone whose husband died and needs encouragement, or they’re just going through a really rough time.”

Amy said she also put out a call to the larger Newtown community on social media, particularly getting a lot of traction in local Facebook groups.

The end result was a list of 60 names from people in Newtown and the neighboring area. All the pies were hand-delivered later that same Saturday, as well as the day after that.

According to New Heights Baptist Church member Gary Jeanfaivre, who is also on the church’s board of trustees, the pie drive is an extension of their larger goal to help their community.

“There’s also just such great need,” Gary said. “There are some people who suffer silently ... and we love our community. We live here, we care for each other, we want to do what we can to help.”

To that end, each pie came with some words from the Gospel, along with an invitation to the church for Christmas service.

When asked how the pie drive went, Gary said baking the pies is just one part of it. The real gift, he said, is when someone receives the pie, and what that kindness means for them and their family.

“We just want to be a blessing to the community,” Gary said.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.