Dear Friend of the Mission,

“Life can be totally different – you can enjoy a good life filled with the blessings of the Lord!” In many different ways this is something we try to convey to our residents during their stay at the Mission. The homeless men who come to the Mission have suffered a hard life – a life of poverty, homelessness, hunger, abuse, loneliness and despair. They are rather skeptical that their life can ever be any different. For years and sometimes even a lifetime, all they have known is pain and hardship.

We work hard to light a spark of hope in the hearts of our men. We do so by both our words and our actions. For example, our chapel services are joy-filled celebrations in which we emphasize the love and goodness of the Lord. Our meals are delicious and nutritious and often end up with no leftovers because our men come back for seconds and even thirds. We try to maintain a clean, comfortable and nicely decorated dormitory. Our dormitory air conditioning was really appreciated by our men this past summer which set records for the number of days in the 90’s.

Lately, we have been asking folks to either donate new pillows for our men (you can order them on-line and have them delivered directly to us) or to give us gift cards to buy pillows at Walmart, Target or Amazon. While we put vinyl mattress covers on our mattresses to protect from bedbugs, we never put a vinyl pillowcase on our pillows because vinyl pillowcases are just plain uncomfortable. We use only cloth pillowcases. However, this results in our pillows wearing out sooner with the result that we are always in need of new, fluffy pillows for our men.

We also provide our men with a comprehensive program that gives them all of the skills and resources they need to get a good job, move into their own home and to no longer be homeless. As the Lord begins to rebuild the broken lives of our men, that small spark of hope implanted in their heart is fanned into a brightly burning flame that fills them with hope and confidence to move forward in life. Our men begin to experience for themselves what we told them when they first arrived at the Mission – that life can be totally different, that they can enjoy the good things of the Lord for themselves.

Please accept my special thanks for the generous gifts you have given to eliminate our cash deficit by the end of our fiscal year on September 30th. You have made a huge dent in our $30,000 cash deficit. Please continue to give as you are able so we finish our current fiscal year with all of our bills paid and we begin our new fiscal year on October 1st on a firm financial footing.

With much thankfulness,

Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director