From the Metro District Newsletter
It was great to be a part of the important work of UMCOR and the West Depot, which has only been open for a couple of years and has already touched the lives of thousands of people around the world. Here’s what has happened at the Salt Lake City depot to date: ·23,000 health kits were sent to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010;
15,792 school kits were sent to the Gaza Strip in Palestine in 2011; 20,160 health kits, 5,040 school kits, and 392 layette kits were sent to the Republic of Georgia in 2011;
31,584 health kits were sent to Armenia in 2011; An additional 24,192 healtkits and 3,696 school kits were sent to the Republic of Georgia in 2011; 15,792 school kits were sent to Haiti in 2011; 900 cleaning buckets were sent to Montana to aid in flood relief; 200 cleaning buckets were sent to Colorado to aid in wildfire clean-up.
Family Bridge -
Family Bridge is a program for homeless families. Approx every 9 weeks, Aloha UMC and Westside UMC co-host a week at the Aloha site.
During the day, clients spend their time at the day house in Hillsboro, but the evenings are spent in local churches, where they receive dinner and a place to sleep. Volunteers from the two church supply dinner and serve as overnight host.
Family Bridge recently received a grant and has purchased a new washer/dryer for the day house. However, they need to replace the tile on the floor before they can have the appliances delivered. If anyone has expertise to offer, they are open to suggestions and having you lead the way. Please give the day house office a call at 503-844-2919 if you can help.
The Lord’s Cupboard
The Lord’s Cupboard has been able to continue serving 8 families a week or as many as Care to Share has been able to give us. It is through your generous in kind and financial donations that we can do this. Some thoughts we have for many who wish to contribute on a regular basis might be to supply a particular product, such as sugar or coffee or fruit juice, in a particular quantity once a month. If you prefer to shop for variety, we will continue to put up sticky notes and try to keep you updated through the newsletter and weekly bulletin announcements.
One of the issues around updating our needs, is that our requests are always a week behind. In kind donations come in on Sunday and we likely use that product the following Saturday and don’t get it replaced until after we serve the following Saturday. That may sound confusing! Maybe the best way to explain is to say we potentially need 14 of any staple product to stay ahead of the needs.Eventually we will be needing to serve up to 13 family units each week but we do not yet have a firm date for doing that. You will be apprised of that as soon as we know. For now there are many needs to meet for our whole church community. Your added donations for the larger community are always appreciated and needed as you are able.
Feeding the larger community is one way for our church to be relevant to the larger community!
And The Lord’s Cupboard has been doing that for 10 years, since it’s inception in September, 2001 when we opened in partnership with Westside United Methodist Church. Congratulations for a decade of mission work!