Dear Friends,
Your support for our food security efforts to the Hudson Bend communities during this pandemic has been life-saving. Through the money budgeted by your Mission Committee, and with help from our IAMLT partners and others, we have been able to sustain this mission at a high level over the past nine months, assembling and delivering weekly supplies to 75 households, serving 200 people. Esme Gomez, our Hudson Bend Mission Coordinator came on board in April, and has helped us reach out to these communities throughout the pandemic, making sure food was distributed each week:
$20,000 worth of food purchased through Mobile Loaves and Fishes:
bread, deli meat, cheese, apples, oranges, cookies,
and occasionally tortillas and bananas.
$4,000 worth of HEB gift cards for other grocery needs,
given to families once in August and once in September.
$5,400 worth of HEB gift cards distributed for Thanksgiving.
Weekly or bi-weekly boxes of canned goods provided through El Buen Samaritano
and Central Texas Food Bank (July-October).
Occasional in-kind food donations through Keep Austin Fed,
totalling more than $5,000 in food donations
Hundreds of dozens of cookies baked and donated by members of PCLT!
This food assistance is so desperately needed. On one recent weekend, as one mother lifted the box of canned goods, I handed a bag of groceries to the outstretched arms of her daughter. She opened the bag, looked inside, and exclaimed: “Ay, que rico!” It was just simple lunch fixings, but she felt rich to receive them!
Because of your generous financial support, the congregation committed $12,000 to this effort in 2020. As we begin the budget process for 2021, the Session and the Mission Committee will look to YOU to make this ongoing mission possible. Please consider prayerfully your financial commitment to the PCLT Budget for 2021.
Jesus tells his followers, in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, “I was hungry and you fed me. When you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.”
Peace,
Pastor Jack