BLOOMINGTON - Added to the usual logistics of preparing 500 Thanksgiving meals Thursday, delivering more than half of them and serving the rest, Home Sweet Home Ministries' staff and volunteers had to cope with a fire in the building earlier this week and the hefty repair costs to a boiler. | Photo gallery | Slideshow: 10 ways you can help this year

The challenges didn't seem to bother almost 75 volunteers preparing meals at the Billy Shelper Center at 303 E. Oakland or delivering them on Thursday. Staff, residents, and volunteers were also thankful that the fire caused minimal disruption.

"We're very, very lucky," said Sabrina Burkiewicz, vice president of marketing and retail operations. When the alarm sounded and smoke was noticed on Monday at 5:30 p.m., all 80 residents were safely evacuated, the fire put out and the boiler soon repaired.

"It never got below 65 degrees," she said of the temperature in the building until the repair was complete. The fire brought to mind a more serious one in 1978 which destroyed parts of the ministries' buildings, she said.

Although the cost of repair is estimated at to be $4,000, a donor, who requests to remain anonymous, gave $2,000 to pay for the boiler parts. Burkiewicz said they are hoping other donations will cover the remaining boiler expense.

Despite the setback, CarolAnn Carara, food services manager, staff and volunteers managed to cook 10 turkeys each day this week to have the food ready on time. They also managed to continue the daily food services, for which demand continues to increase. In October alone, the ministry served 7,588 meals, up 40 percent from this time last year.

Together volunteers carried on a tradition started by Billy Shelper, the mission's founder, who opened the doors of Home Sweet Home on Thanksgiving Day in 1917 on Front Street in downtown Bloomington.

"It is good to be part of a 91-year tradition," said volunteer Judy Redemen of Atlanta. She helped coordinate the Thanksgiving meal over the last month; the last week was "pretty intense," she said.

"It's an event to honor God," she said of the Thanksgiving tradition as she prepared food trays for one of the 58 volunteer drivers who delivered 323 meals.

"Serving and sharing lets people know you care," she said.

Few of the volunteers know more about what this means than Tim Graham of Bloomington. He was a resident for 14 months and graduated in 2006 from the Home Sweet Home Ministries' Threshold program for people with drug and alcohol addictions.

He now has a full-time job at Scadaware Inc. in Bloomington and gives back to Home Sweet Home when he can.

"It changed my life," he said.

He remembers being a recipient of the Thanksgiving dinner, and vows to volunteer to make it possible for others every Thanksgiving. This year he took photographs, delivered meals and ran errands.

His ex-wife and children live in Europe. "This place was my family for 14 months," he said. It continues to be so.

Others volunteered for the first time including Mark Bronke of Normal, his son Jackson, 11 and friend Jonathan Rink, 11.

"Cool" was the response of Jackson, a fifth-grader at Grove Elementary School in Normal, when his father told him their plans for Thanksgiving morning before a family dinner later in the day.

"We want to help people not as privileged as us and to give back to the community," Mark, an employee of the juvenile detention center in Peoria, told his son.

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- 10: The number of turkeys cooked daily this week leading up to Thanksgiving to be ready.

- 91: Years ago Home Sweet Home's doors opened for the first time on Thanksgiving Day on Front Street in Bloomington.

- 75: The number of volunteers, who cooked, served packed and delivered food.

- 150: The approximate number of those sitting down for a meal at the center

- 323: Meals delivered to the elderly and those shut-in by volunteers.

- 7,588: The number of meals served by Home Sweet Home in October, up 1,000 from the previous month.