It was a first for both the church and the mosque. And it worked out beautifully.

In a partnership built on the true spirit of giving, members of the London Muslim mosque have helped a Roman Catholic church drive gather enough food to help nourish more than 100 families this season.

“I feel extremely pleased and grateful, looking around this room,” Moe Lacerte said as he surveyed the donations that had been brought in to St. John the Divine Catholic Church.

“We’ve never had so much to give. We will have extra; we’ll be able to replenish our food bank here.”

Larcerte, the volunteer president of the St. Vincent de Paul conference at the church, said he reached out to the mosque for the first time this year when asking for donations.

“We all want the same things: peace and respect, and I see this as a beginning of working together.”

Mosque members welcomed the request with joy, said Ali D. Chahbar, who helped organize the drive with Zeba Hashmi, head of the outreach committee.

“To us, the spirit of Christmas is the spirit of brotherly love, and why wouldn’t we want to be a part of it?”

Chahbar said he noticed the spirit this week as he left a shop with items for his daughter to make a gingerbread house.

“It is so nice. People are really different. They are nicer and you notice it,” he said. “I wanted to get a megaphone and shout ‘Can we keep this going all year, people?’.

“We are not Christians and don’t celebrate Christmas but we are engulfed by the spirit and . . . any time there’s a jubilant harmonious feeling, whatever creed it is under, we thrive on it,” he said.

Chahbar said most of the 30 boxes of food donated by the mosque were collected by children at the Islamic School.

“It was fantastic, amazing,” he said. “Within the blink of an eye, they had boxes and boxes.”

Lacerte had a similar reaction to the food collected by members of Western University’s Muslim Student Association.

“We filled a pickup truck, and my van is filled to the gunnels,” he said. “It was unbelievable.”

jennifer.obrien@sunmedia.ca

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