By: David Austin
C4x4.com and Red Dirt Jeepers had joined forces to host a Community Jeep Show / Meet and Greet to help Yukon Sharing Ministries (YSM) on their food Drive. Yukon Sharing Ministries is a Non-profit Public Benefit Corporation located in Yukon, Oklahoma whose primary mission is to provide assistance to individuals and families in need within the community. They have been working as a Non-Profit agent since 1987. This status allows the organization to receive partial funding from many area groups such as The Salvation Army, The United Way of Canadian County and local Churches.

Private citizens, as well as local businesses and merchants have long supported their efforts. The organization has been serving the Yukon area and Canadian County, Oklahoma area for over twenty years. With the continued support of the community, they continue to provide many services that the less fortunate can access.

YSM helps families in the Yukon area that struggle to put food on their table. In order help these families, YSM relies on donations from the community in order to keep their shelves stocked. This year, the Yukon Sharing Ministries asked different areas of Yukon to reach specific goals in weight of food gathered. Yukon Main Street merchants, which consists of business sitting on old Route 66, decided that their goal would be to raise 6600 lbs of canned goods for the charity.
After their meeting, Judy Austin of Yukon Flower's & Gifts extended the opportunity to participate to the Red Dirt Jeep Club as well as other Jeep groups in the area.

The Oklahoma City area Jeepers have a great track record for helping out the surrounding communities and giving back to their neighbors. 2 weeks before the event, Judy got in contact with the administration of Red Dirt Jeepers and pulled together a game plan. RDJ and C4x4 would provide items for a raffle to help entice the Jeepers to participate and RDJ would also provide items to all of the kids in attendance.

For some entertainment, RDJ set up their articulation ramp for anyone that wanted to test out their rigs flexability. As the Jeeps lined up with their canned goods, we off loaded them and provided raffle tickets. This process kept us hoppin' as the Jeep family really stepped up to the plate for this. For about 2 ½ hours we got to check out around 80 Jeeps and their modifications. We enjoyed watching all the action over at the RTI Ramp and the fellowship with old friends and many new ones.

As the canned goods continued to come in, we packed them into a Chevy van which begin to show the stress of all the canned food. As the event begin to wind down and the tires of the van nearly pressed flat, we decided that it would be unsafe to try to transport the mountain of food to it's destination. The plan was then to get a truck dispatched the next morning to off load the food from the overloaded van. What a great problem to have!


The folks from Yukon Sharing Ministries and Yukon Main Street Business we quite impressed with the turn out and generosity of the folks representing the Off Road Communities around the area. When the food was weighed, we had loaded 1860lbs of non perishable food item into our now low riding van.

A Big thanks to all those that participated in this benefit. You made us proud.

Thanks from the Austin's, C4X4. Red Dirt Jeeps and Yukon Sharing Ministries... until we meet again real soon...

David Austin--Okie-Out

Pictures provides by attendees

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