VIDALIA — Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church’s annual harvest celebration is taking place a little late this year — but just in time to call it an end of the year celebration, church members said.

Choir president and organizer Sarah Jones said the small church — located at 744 Moose Lodge Road — typically has a homecoming and harvest celebration each year in September or October to reunite former church members and welcome new faces to the congregation of about 50 people.

“We look forward to it,” Jones said. “We have a small dinner to feed about 100 people and welcome members that have strayed to come back and see how we’re getting along. New members also come and celebrate with us.”

This annual celebration takes place at 5 p.m. Saturday at the church, just in time for the fellowship to reunite before the end of one decade and the beginning of 2020.

“We’re calling it our end of the year celebration,” Jones said, adding a special guest speaker, Rev. Julius McCray — pastor of Love Chapel in Ruston and a Ferriday native — will be giving a special message with the meal.

The minister of music, De’Artis Hudson and the church choir also provide special music for the occasion, Jones said.

Though small, Jones said Mount Pilgrim is rich with history and with blessings — as its existence was spared by an act of God sometime in the 1960s.

“The church once sat on the property of Whitehall Plantation for 100 years until new plantation owners ordered it to move,” Jones said. “Right after we relocated to Vidalia, water from the Mississippi River took the land where it once stood.”

No harvest celebration would be complete without a harvest feast, Jones said, so chicken, dressing, string beans, potato salad, cake and rolls would be served to all attendees. The celebration is open to the public, Jones said.