LEWISTON — Patricia Peacock braved the crush of families lining College Street Saturday to do some holiday shopping for her daughter and grandchildren.

Peacock wasn’t at the mall or parked at a big box store on a warm December weekend, two weeks before Christmas. She was standing inside a former Presbyterian Church that was converted in the 1990s into a community center.

The couple that runs the place, Jan and Bruce Willson, collects new and older toys, used clothing and food to share with those who are less fortunate.

It’s called Hope House, where optimism was etched on the faces of each of the more than 120 families that came through the double doors of the former church as well as those of the roughly 30 volunteers who assisted Saturday’s shoppers.

Peacock, who has worked as volunteer at Hope House, was shopping for presents on Saturday for her 28-year-old daughter, Victoria, and for Peacock’s five grandchildren, three girls and two boys ranging in age from two months to six years.

Peacock was seeking educational toys, she said, but hoped to find a Thomas the Train toy, a favorite theme of her youngest grandson.

This was not Peacock’s first time shopping at Hope House. She and Victoria, who took parenting classes there, have made use of the Willson’s farmers market free produce and other services offered at Hope’s House’s family support center.

“I think they’re Godsends, I really do. I think they’re angels,” Peacock said of the Willsons.

The atmosphere in the former church is festive as strains of instrumental Christmas carols are barely heard over the din of neighborhood chatter, punctuated by the delighted shrieks of children. Shoppers pick through toddler toys and Play-Doh, as well as board games, craft sets, puzzles and sculpting clay.

The Willsons provided their shoppers with a more serene experience than the pushes and shoves associated with the typical holiday retail shopping scene by admitting a half-dozen at a time. Volunteers were posted at every table to guide the shoppers who were allowed five new items to stuff into their complimentary garbage bags. Each shopper was given a ticket for every station in the large room, which features a snack bar stocked with free food and drinks. Out back, shoppers were entitled to 10 items from the thrift store that houses used clothing, toys and food staples.

An hour-and-a-half after the doors opened, all shelves in the front were bare. No one left empty handed, Bruce Willson said.

“We always seem to have what we need,” he said. “God is good.”

Most of the hundreds of new items given away during Saturday’s toy distribution were donated through the Toys for Tots Foundation, Jan Willson said. Some churches and neighbors also donated gifts for Hope House to give away.

What started in 1986 at the Willson’s Mechanic Falls farmhouse as a foster home for pregnant teenagers has blossomed nearly 30 years later into a downtown Lewiston community drop-in center that offers food and clothing as well as instruction and information on a variety of issues, including health and immigration. A free women’s health clinic for the neighborhood is located next door to the former church building.

“We started with shelter, saw the ongoing needs of parents struggling with poverty and single parenthood or trauma in their background,” Jan Willson said. Since then, they have established six other shelters in Maine for teenage mothers, and, recently, one in Seoul, South Korea.

In 1994, Hope House opened its doors in Lewiston in buildings donated by St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, including the former church.

Over the past four or five years, their numbers have tripled, Jan Willson said, due to the 2008 recession and the influx of refugees from war-torn nations, often filling the former church space to near capacity. At some of the center’s events, including potluck meals, translations run to a half-dozen foreign languages, she said, boasting of the center’s multi-cultural draw.

Islamic and Christian aphorisms urging neighborly affection are prominently displayed in the former church where, on Wednesday’s mornings, mothers of all faiths and races gather to share their common experiences, aspirations and provide support.

On Saturday, the center was teeming with volunteers from a mix of races and ethnicities.

Working on the toy donation on Saturday with Jan Willson was Zahara “Layla” Osman, a multilingual translator at the center who has worked with Willson on other community events.

In July, they set up tables across the street from both mosques in Lewiston, where volunteers from the family support center gave away more than 200 cakes for Eid, a Muslim religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, Willson said.

“And now our Muslim friends are helping us with this Christmas celebration and it’s a really sweet thing that we’re helping each other celebrate our special faith holidays,” Willson said.

On Saturday, at the center’s snack bar, wedges of birthday cake were handed out to celebrate the upcoming day Jesus Christ was born, Bruce Willson said.