Well Lake Fellowship members and friends, you’ve outdone yourselves in providing much needed food and financial support to our neighbors who are feeling unsafe.
Let me summarize what your giving meant to families in our community:
WeCAN Food Collection
The Gauers brought all of your donations from last Sunday to WeCAN on Monday (2-2-26). In addition to filling three Cub Foods tote boxes containing an assortment of non perishables to be delivered (by WeCAN) to immigrant families who feel unsafe leaving their homes, there were still more than a half dozen bags of food for WeCAN's mobile delivery service.
I like numbers and stats, so our donations amounted to the following:
- 3 boxes of emergency food, 145lbs of food
- LF Neighborhood Food Project (NFP) food donations, 110lbs of food
That means we donated 255lbs of food in February. Yahoo, nicely done!
But that’s not all….we had more donations through our monthly Soup Sunday collection.
I understand we had approximately 15 people Sunday. Despite being fewer people than usual, you raised a lot of much needed cash. Lake Fellowship raised $200 for WeCAN to buy fresh food to go with the emergency food boxes, and $100 for WeCAN's Rent/Utilities Assistance Fund.
Laurie gave them the money when she dropped off the food and WeCAN staff was delighted! We were the first congregation to bring in food for this emergency drive and they were very grateful. They plan to keep collecting for this drive for another week, and deliver the Emergency boxes next week.
They are still working out the details for the next phase, which will be an Adopt-a-Family program: groups will commit to shopping for and delivering food to a family each week. They suggested that for the larger congregations, bible study or book groups could adopt a family. Perhaps Lake Fellowship could adopt one or maybe two families. You’ll be getting more information soon.
WeCAN Speaker/Program
WeCAN’s volunteer coordinator, Kari Raaen, would be happy to come talk with us after they get the details about the adopt-a-family program set up – and to do a program soon. More coming on this soon.
Love Our Neighbors Gathering
This was some confusion about the dates for the "Love Our Neighbors" event originally planned for this month that we mentioned in a newsletter last week. I checked with WeCAN and they said the organizers put this event on hold, so if there is a change, I will let you know.
Volunteering Opportunities
WeCAN is currently welcoming volunteers for the following services:
- Front Desk
- Mobile Market
- Food Recovery
- Packing
- Delivery
- Meals-on-Wheels
- WeCAB Drivers
Please call or visit WeCAN in Mound to sign up or visit their website to learn more.
I think that’s enough of an update for now, more to come next week.
Thanks again for all you do, and pat yourselves on the back, you’ve earned it. Let’s keep showing up and supporting our community!
Tim Wendt