Due to federal budget cuts this year, the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry faced a Thanksgiving crisis.

The pantry traditionally prepares boxes of Thanksgiving meals for families who would otherwise go without. That meal includes turkey and all the trimmings.

But Katie Arko, Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry director, said while the pantry could afford the 900 turkeys for the boxes, it could not afford the things that go with them.

Enter Aurora’s faith-based community.

Arko talked with the Rev. Brandon Perrine, senior minister at New England Congregational Church, who organized churches to step in and help collect some of those things that make up a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

“We were the trimmings,” Perrine said.

New England Congregational, along with St. Mark’s Lutheran Ch

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