The Harbour View campus of Liberty Baptist Church has brightened thousands of lives this Easter after giving away about 650 boxes of food Saturday.

At Bridgeway Technology Center on Harbour View Boulevard, church volunteers distributed boxes in two installments, in the morning and afternoon.

Recipients, after an introduction to the church with services in the worship center, pulled up to trucks in the parking lot, where volunteers placed the boxes directly into their vehicles and issued friendly invitations to attend an Easter Sunday service.

“I’m blessed, because of the fact that I don’t have anything in my fridge right now,” Thomasine Crandle said after receiving a box, adding that she has three others in her household.

“I heard about this at another church today. I thought, ‘OK, I will go out.’”

Crandle said she was strengthened by the guest speaker during the service, former NFL Keith Davis.

“When I got here, I heard him speak. And I needed it right now,” Crandle said. “He was very powerful. A lot of stuff was going on in my life, and he just touched me a lot.”

Standing 6-foot-2 and biceps bulging, Davis was an imposing presence onstage. He spoke about the “first half” and the “second half,” telling his audience that it’s never too late to turn things around.

“We did not win the game in the first half, we won it in the second half,” he said, after describing a football game he once played in at the L.A. Coliseum, where his team emerged from a punishing first half with no points on the scoreboard, but regrouped and refocused for the second half and then won.

“In the crowd today, I have some people who have had some bad first halves,” Davis said. “No matter what has happened in the first half and who did you wrong, and no matter what wounds and scars you have, everybody here, you can have a great second half.”

Tallying the amount of food given away, Missions Pastor Ken McLemore said 241 boxes were loaded into vehicles during the morning session, and almost 400 remained to give away in the afternoon.

“The word got out into different areas, so it has been good,” he said, adding that the giveaway at the church’s Hampton campus — also held Saturday — was similarly well received.

“The people have been great.”