In the Face of 2020

COVID, Creativity, Cancer, Challenge, Conquer, and Change...

What a year!! Starting off with COVID-19 and the mandates to "stay home" in March, our team of 4 got creative in how we continued to provide services to guest families and our diversion program. We placed guest families in hotel rooms for quarantine, placed 4 wall-mounted mail boxes by the front door for application pick ups and drop offs, we began sanitizing, cleaning, purchasing air filters, wall thermometers to check temperatures, wearing masks, social distancing, limited gathering, and setting up to work from home. In May, our Case Manager passed away from stomach cancer. In July, I was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC), skin cancer. The following months proved challenging as I passed through surgery and chemotherapy. My hair is much thinner, which I LOVE! However, our team conquered all those changes. Here we are in mid-December, and in the homestretch of 2020! How did we manage to make it through all that? Through the compassionate care of each team member, volunteer, guest family, donors, funders, and prayer warriors. You helped us serve 9 families, 60 individuals, for a total of 1,038 shelter nights! We celebrated with 6 of those families as they found sustainable incomes and housing! And YOU helped!

From our families to yours, we pray you all have a safe and healthy holiday season.

Ginger

Family Updates

Today is a busy day at our place. We received over 50 coats from a local coat drive. They are being given directly to our current guest families. And, we are strategically placing the others around the community where our homeless population is often seen. Also, today, the LDS church youth helped us dismantle the bunk beds in a room that our graduating family just moved out of. The room is getting NEW carpet that was donated by Home Depot! The carpet is going down as I write this blog. Later today, we are being gifted a LAREGE whiteboard to mount on the living room wall. Kids of all ages can draw, write, and color many pictures for years to come! We are so excited about all the changes going on! Thank you to The Mat-Su Moms for Social Justice , the LDS church, Home Depot, Don, Luke, and the generosity of our wonderful community for helping us continue in the work that we do for our community.

Ready? Set? Here we go!

Planning has begun for our very first virtual event! Hope you plan to participate. Visit our Events page for more details. Be thinking about what your "home" is going to look like in our virtual city. Join our virtual HOMES (BINGO) game and win prizes!