With hearts full of gratitude and plates full of food, 28 men at a Butler County homeless shelter dined Tuesday on a breakfast organized, cooked and served by a single family.

The Christmas morning feast at Hope House Center for Men in Middletown included an option of fried or scrambled eggs, ham or bacon, plus sausage, hash brown potatoes, biscuits and gravy, coffee cake, orange juice and coffee.

“This is wonderful,” said Paul Smith, 42, a shelter guest of nearly five months. “I’d rather be sitting right here eating and getting ready to go to church than being out there on the streets in the cold.

“It’s awesome for them to spend their time to come over here Christmas morning to feed us.”

The meal came courtesy of Steve Best and wife Pam Schreiter Best, who brought sons Clayton, 17; Cameron, 14; and Cooper, 9, to serve each guest.

“Our family’s been so blessed in so many ways and we want to teach the kids that when you’re blessed, it’s our job to bless others,” Pam Schreiter Best said.

Kevin Long, 53, a Hope House guest of three weeks, said he was grateful that someone cooked and served a meal on a morning when people typically are opening gifts at home.

“It means that somebody cares,” Long said. “They went that extra mile. They’re sacrificing their morning for us.”

Bringing along their children to serve the meal provided “an invaluable lesson,” said 59-year-old Anthony Shope, a center guest of three days.

“In the old days, they called that ‘noblesse oblige’ — (a French phrase meaning) those blessed should turn and bless,” Shope said. “If you’re blessed, ‘pay it forward,’ in modern parlance.”

To help guests in advance of the holiday, the family also distributed fliers and bags to 300 homes in their Mason subdivision and collected carfuls of clothes, toiletries and non-perishable food for shelter guests.

Steve Best said the family started donating time and money to Hope House last Christmas after learning of the shelter’s 2011 record.

“Forty-four percent of the men who came through here are now living on their own with jobs,” he said. “They’re not just feeding them and that’s it. They actually help them get prepared for a job, get prepared to live by themselves and I just think that’s awesome.

“It’s really a privilege for us to do this.”