FAIRBANKS — More than a week before Thanksgiving, Cindy Fields and a small army of volunteers were busy gathering the 40 turkeys, 20 hams and 50 pounds of stuffing needed for Immaculate Conception Church’s annual Thanksgiving dinner.

Dozens of people will volunteer to serve food at the church Thursday for what Fields estimates will be about 500 guests. It’s hard to estimate how many people will come ahead of time, but the church has seen a 25 percent increase in the number of people coming to its weekend soup kitchen.

Some of that increase includes children and families.

“I get nervous if I have five people come to dinner at my house,” Fields said. “We have 500.”

Fields has been director of Immaculate Conception’s community service ministry for the past four years. While she’s responsible for organizing much of the Thanksgiving dinner, the life-long Fairbanksan is quick to deflect credit for the effort.

“It’s all about the volunteers,” she said. “There’s nothing we could do without the volunteers.”

Volunteers also will contribute traditional Alaska foods such as salmon, moose and caribou to the meal. And after Thanksgiving, the food will be frozen for the soup kitchen the following weekend.

“It’s beautiful how we don’t let anything go unused,” Fields said.

Fields hesitates to count how many hours of work she puts in at the church, but she said it gives her little free time, which she usually fills by reading spiritual books.

“I’m here until the work is done, and it’s never done,” she said.

Fields attended Immaculate Conception as a child, but said she drifted away from the church for many years.

In the late 1980s, she felt Fairbanks was beginning to change from the small, friendly community she knew when she was younger. She felt something was missing in her life.

She found herself at a noon mass at Immaculate Conception. Though she tried to appear inconspicuous in the back of the church, the priest remembered her from years before and welcomed her back, even making her a Eucharistic minister at the mass.

That day, Fields felt something of a spiritual re-awakening.

“There’s a part in the mass where the priest says, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I will be healed,’” Fields said. “I heard that and I damn near fell to my knees.”

Soon after, Fields began volunteering at a hospice for a terminally ill friend. Her volunteerism in the community has continued to grow during the years, eventually leading to her position at the church.

One of the main groups Fields ministers to is what city leaders call the chronic inebriate population, though Fields calls that term a “slur.” She is horrified at the number of homeless people in the city who die of exposure each winter.

Fields feels above all, the homeless in Fairbanks just need hope and compassion. She takes a non-judgemental attitude to the poorest in the city, believing that a warm meal and clean clothes can go further to getting someone off the street than jail time.

“The people we serve are pretty desperate and lonely,” she said. “We get the opportunity to invite them in and give them some real basic human dignity.”

Fields also has been at the forefront of creating a damp shelter in Fairbanks for homeless substance abusers.

In Fairbanks, intoxicated people are not welcome at the Rescue Mission, and beds at detox facilities are extremely limited.

“If I could do it today, I would, but it’s difficult to set up,” she said.

Fields is working to procure federal money for such a facility, but in the meantime will continue to help the poorest of the poor in the city at Immaculate Conception.

“I love my work,” she said. “It’s not a job to me.”