NOVEMBER 14 -- Eat Out and Help the Food Pantry

A message from HACAP --
It's Monday night, you just walked in the door....the kids are hungry, your spouse hasn't started supper and even the dog thinks your shoe is pretty appetizing...Have no fear...Granite City is near!

On Monday November 14, dine at the Cedar Rapids Granite City and 10% of sales will be donated to the HACAP Food Reservoir.
Bring your spouse, your kids...sorry, but the dog will have to stay at home!
Thanks for helping us end hunger...one meal at a time!
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The Hacap Food Resevoir helps CROSSROADS MISSION fill a gap in our food pantry. Supporting them helps to support our mission as well.
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Don't forget direct donations are always welcome too. Every $ helps the hungry and those who are in need.

Coats for Adults - Quilts/Blankets

The weather is turning toward winter and many in our community are without warm coats and blankets for warmth. There are organizations that have an annual drive for children's coats -- Crossroads Mission is focusing our request on coats for the many adults who are in need. Blankets and quilts are also needed by many families.

Please share what you are able to share.



Items may be brought to Crossroads Mission Tuesday through Friday.

Action NOW is needed

A big part of the food we provide to our guests at CrossRoads comes from the USDA Commodity Program. This is food bought by our government from farmers and distributed to food banks throughout the country, including CrossRoads. The purpose is to feed hungry people in our communities. CrossRoads gets this food from HACAP for 12 cents a pound. That cost is far less than it would cost us or our donors to buy it from grocery stores.

Now we have a big problem. Congress already cut the program 30% this year. We are really feeling the pinch at CrossRoads and can only turn to our donors to make up for the lost food – at retail prices.

To make matters worse, the US House of Representatives just passed a new bill to cut this program ANOTHER 20%. The bill is called HR 2112. If the same 20% is passed by the Senate, the value of the food lost this year to just the food banks supplied by HACAP will be $632,168!

The US Senate’s appropriations bill is still being written. This gives us a chance to encourage our Senators Grassley and Harkin to vote to keep all the current funding in the Senate bill. Then the matter will have to be decided in a conference committee with representatives of both the Senate and House.

We can’t buy enough food from HACAP to meet all the requests for food at CrossRoads. The 30% cut we’ve already received comes on top of a huge growth in demand for food. A year ago, we were feeding about 800 people a month. Look at the growth in people fed:

June 2010	800+
October 2010	1200+
January 2011	900+
April 2011	1400+
June 2011	1600+

(A bright spot is that Quaker now provides cereals, crackers and snacks directly to us for free. We don’t get it through HACAP for even the 12 cents a pound. This is important. Thank you, Quaker! Individual, business and church donations are critical beyond description. Thank you, Donors! You now provide way more than half the food we distribute in a month.)

How can you help?

1. Please write or phone Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA). You will find contact info at the end of this letter .Phone calls to the local offices are good. Handwritten letters and email letters are good, too.

· Tell them your relationship to the CrossRoads Mission food pantry: person receiving food, volunteer, financial and/or food donor, or board member.

· Tell them how another 20% cut to the USDA Commodity Program will hurt hungry people in our community.

· Ask them to pass the Senate appropriations bill without further cuts to the USDA Commodity Program.

· Tell them that our donors are trying to keep up with the need, but the growth is so fast that we had only cereal and crackers to give for parts of the last month. More cuts will worsen an already critical situation for the hungry.

2. Please write the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Explain the situation at the mission as above. You are not asking him to fund the House or Senate appropriation bills for commodities – that’s not his decision, but to direct specific discretionary funds within his own budget to the commodities program.

Senator Chuck Grassley 135 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 http://grassley.senate.gov Cedar Rapids District Office 319-363-6832	Senator Tom Harkin 731 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 http://harkin.senate.gov Cedar Rapids District Office 319-365-4504
Secretary of Agriculture – Tom Vilsack US Dept of Agriculture 1400 Independence Ave SW Washington DC 20250 1-202-720-3631

“Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and hour healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.” Isaiah 58: 7-8

Vicar Pat Kane - executive director, CrossRoads Mission, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Food Contributions Needed

Please help --

We are continuing to break record numbers of individuals we serve in the culture of poverty including the homeless. In the month of June 2011 we have served over 1,600 individuals with food. The numbers keep growing and we need your help.

At the same time food donations have been down from individuals, churches, and businesses. For the first time in over five years, we have not been able to purchase ground venison through the Iowa poverty program for the past two months, and will not until the next hunting season is well underway. We are also experiencing a shortage of food we can buy through HACAP. HACAP itself tells us that they are receiving 50% less food from the U. S. Government that they have in the past. As they continue to serve their seven county area as best as they can, we are hearing of food pantry closures due to the food shortage.

We need your prayers and help in stocking our food shelves with canned vegetables, tuna, and fruit; as well as frozen one pound packages of hamburger and canned beef stew and other canned meals with high protein.

You are in our prayers. God bless!

Yours in Christ,

Chaplain Pat Kane

Donations NEEDED - Help Your Neighbor

Due to the continued high need for food to pass out to our guests, and the continuing shortage of food availability for purchase through HACAP, we are asking our support base to help generate food drives to keep our food pantry filled. The following is a list of our human, monetary, and food support needs:

1. Volunteers to work at the mission.
2. Financial donations (see address to the right; or may donate via the web using PayPal or major credit card - use donation button on the right.)
   
3. Toilet paper.
4. Personal care items (body soap, shampoo, toothbursh, toothpaste, deodorant, etc.)
5. Canned meals (stew, SpaghettiO's).
6. Canned tuna.
7. Canned meat. Hamburger Helper.
8. Tuna Helper.
9. Mac & Cheese.

Please keep our needs in your prayers. Thank you.

Yours in Christ,

Chaplain Pat Kane
Executive Director

Food and Financial Appeal

In the first ten (10) days of December 2010 we have provided food to 530 people in 175 family units. We could easily run out of food early next week. The good news is we are scheduled to purchase and pickup food through the HACAP Food Reservoir on Thursday, December 16, 2010. With twenty-one (21) days left in the month of December, we are making this appeal. Our financial donations are also less than anticipated probably due to the recession, ongoing flood recovery in the area, as well as the holidays are on the horizon. So our numbers of folks in need continue to climb, our funds continue to decline, and we are in a crunch to make the ends meet. We have not been supporting folks with rent and utility needs to prevent homelessness for several weeks now due to our current budget.

We are asking all our supporters through this appeal to search your hearts; keep those in poverty in your prayers; and prayerfully consider boosting your support through financial, in-kind non-perishable food, and warm winter clothing donations. CrossRoads Mission is open Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; except we will close at 1:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. We continue to hold up in prayer our local mission supporters as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ continues to be at the center of what we do for the ". . . least of these. . . ." in our community. May you have a blessed Christmas and New Year. God bless!

Yours in Christ,

Pat Kane,

Executive Director

New Administrative Assistant

Good Afternoon All,

It is a pleasure to be able to announce that following Becky Shurtz's resignation two weeks ago, we have successfully filled her position. We wish Becky and her husband well with her new employment opportunity.
The new Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director at CrossRoads Mission is Sally Sova who is churched at First Lutheran in Cedar Rapids. She has formal post-secondary education in accounting with a B.B.A. from Mount Mercy College, and certification in Computer Programming from Kirkwood Community College. She has backgrounds in banking and in collections. She stepped out of the workforce for over six years while she was the full-time care companion for an ill family member, and is now returning to the workforce. She is a welcomed member of our CrossRoads family.

Yours in Christ,

Pat Kane, Chaplain
Executive Director