Dear Friends,
Last week I wrote about the Joel’s Army branch of our ministry: the most intensive, hands on prayer school you will ever attend!
CedarWood Pantry: every Monday, bright an early, our team of 7 staff members and an average of 20 volunteers, come together and work feverishly through our last pickups to process the supplies, set up our tables, and serve the families that will come to our door that afternoon. Right now, we are open for 90 minutes during which time we serve 75-95 families (representing 270-320 people) every Monday. While we see many of the same people every week, some only come 1-2 times per month depending on their needs. We provide everything at our CedarWood Pantry: meats, dairy, grains, fruits and vegetables. Much of our food is organic, a rare find in the industry but our goal is to ensure these families have the proper nutrition. Plus, the service provided by our staff and volunteers – many of whom began as clients – goes above and beyond!
CedarWood Coats & Clothes: six years ago, our team purchased coats for kids. Today, it’s grown into what looks like a department store! We have all sizes of coats, work clothes, play clothes, and everything in between, including shoes and socks! The Lord opened the door for us to receive household items, including blankets, which helps to keep heating costs down in the icy winters of the Pacific Northwest.
CedarWood BackPack Kids (BPK): meeting the nutritional needs of school children on the weekends. Many of the children in low-income areas rely heavily on school-funded breakfasts/lunch programs for their nutrition. However, when the weekend rolls around, they don’t have access to this program and often return to school on Monday famished from a weekend of scarce food supplies. This is a harsh reality our team wanted to address so we worked with the local school district to assemble six meals, discreetly inserted in an enrolled child’s backpack on Friday afternoon. Six years ago, this started with about a dozen children. After a couple years, the school district developed a program of their own to meet this need. We looked for nearby districts who would accept our support, however, many had programs in place. We almost closed this branch of CedarWood but during a meeting about whether or not to close BPK, the Lord reminded me of a dream He’d given me months prior: someone took our basket of supplies, but almost immediately, we were handed a much larger, fuller basket. I didn’t know practically what that meant, however, the Lord revealed it when we received the call that would immediately multiply our financial output more than 10 times! Long story short, the Sky Valley BPK Program needed our immediate and long-term intervention. (The poverty in this area is suffocating, how could we say no?) We knew the larger basket had been given to us and within a few days, we were providing weekend meals to the 151 children of the Sky Valley Community BPK program—every weekend! This was such a drastic spike from what we were previously supporting, we sent out the call for child sponsorship, and many of you responded and still sponsor a child in this program on a monthly basis for $34.99!
Back-to-School Outreach: each year our team coordinates with local organizations for hair-cuts, backpacks, school supplies, socks, and underwear for the children who come to our CedarWood Pantry. We provide socks and underwear to those enrolled in our BPK Program in the Sky Valley area as well.
CedarWood Ministry to the Homeless: each Saturday, our team heads out to serve the homeless in the Seattle area. This is a process that begins Thursday as supplies are gathered from CedarWood to prepare hot meals for upwards of 100 people. In addition to a homecooked meal, we hand out coats, warm shoes, hats, gloves, hand warmers, tarps, sleeping bags, even small tents when we have them. Each person receives a bag of toiletries and non-perishable food items. The Lord leads every mile of this journey and as always, prayer is extended for each person willing to receive. We go until the supplies are gone. Who do we encounter? Men, women, the youth, and families. The truth is, homelessness is a non-discriminatory entity striving to consume any who enter. It is a heart-breaking tragedy.
Last year as I prepared to write about CedarWood Outreach to the Homeless, the Lord told me that “CedarWood is the last line of defense as each level within CedarWood helps to fend off homelessness for our families for another week.”
Consider the following:
By providing clothing and blankets, CedarWood Coats & Clothes can help minimize a family’s annual expenses by $250-$2000 depending on the family size. The younger the child, the greater the expense.
By providing food, CedarWood Pantry helps minimize a family’s monthly expenses by $400-$1000 depending on the family size.
This alone is a tremendous relief to our families. In addition to reducing their monthly expenditures, their children can eat fresh fruits and vegetables, wholesome dairy products, grains and meat so they are not as prone to illnesses as a result of poor nutrition. It’s difficult to put a dollar amount on this benefit. This is not just about not having to pay for doctor bills and medicine. The whole family benefits when parents don’t have to take time off work and children aren’t missing school due to illness. In addition, their brains are properly nourished, and long-term health is improved when we have proper nutrition.
These are hard-working families, many of them with two-income households yet they still struggle to pay the bills. Everything we do for the families visiting our CedarWood Pantry helps to deter homelessness for another week. No wonder the Lord told me “CedarWood was the last line of defense.”
Providing for their physical needs paved the way for us to reach into their lives on a personal and spiritual level. Over the last six years as we’ve had the opportunity to pray with our precious clients and many have come to know the Lord as their Savior, received physical healing, seen families restored, received jobs, housing, and so on as the Lord continues to answer prayer.
We are immensely grateful for those of you who support this arm of our ministry.
Many months ago, we started our CedarWood Expansion Project. Several have pledged to support the move when the time comes. Well, we’ve just received news that the time has come! After nearly half a century of ministry, Pastor Matthew and Su will retire soon and when they do, they will hand the baton over to a wonderful young pastor and his wife. They have incredible plans for the church and need access to the space CedarWood occupies. It has been such precious journey these last six years, and while change is always difficult, it provides the perfect opportunity for growth. We are looking for a new facility and expect to be moved in by the end of April.
Prayer requests for this transition are as follows:
A facility nearby – we want this transition to be a smooth as possible for our existing families.
God will provide funding for the move as well as the monthly output – this will be a significant increase in our responsibilities and knowing that for many of our clients, CedarWood is their last line of defense, we pray in faith, fully trusting God to provide.
God will provide the manpower for this move – we have several freezers, refrigerators, and 1000s of square feet of food and clothing storage, this is a HUGE undertaking and we want as little interruption in “service” to our clients as possible.
Thank you for standing with our CedarWood arm over the last six years! Many who come to our Seattle Gatherings come early or stay later so they can be a part of our Monday Pantry event! We will keep you posted on our next steps!
Blessings & love,
