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From
Lutheran Community Services March 2011
Editors: This information is prepared for church
newsletter editors, secretaries and pastors. Your help in getting the word out
is appreciated and will help LCS achieve its mission of “Sharing God’s
blessings by helping others in need.” Comments about timing or content are
welcome. Contact
LCS Helped 70,000 in 2010
Demand for food and housing help remained strong during 2010. Through all of its various programs, LCS helped 69,872 people last year. Emergency food assistance was the main growth area, and we provided 57,375 people with healthy food and nutritional information. That’s an increase from 56,139 in 2009. We helped 1,428 people with emergency housing assistance in 2010. We expect to see this strong demand persist in 2011. With God’s help and the support of the community we will continue to provide a strong safety net for those less fortunate than ourselves during this difficult period.
Gimme Shelter Golf Tournament
Gears Up
This year’s Gimme Shelter Golf Tournament will be held on Monday May 16, 2011 at the Chesapeake Bay Golf Club in Northeast, Maryland, and all golfers are invited. The beneficiary is the emergency housing assistance program at LCS. Funds for housing assistance are increasingly hard to find owing to government cutbacks and the general state of the economy. The golf tournament is designed to help meet that need. Last year it raised $11,000! For information about this year’s Gimme Shelter Golf Tournament – as a golfer, volunteer, or sponsor – contact tournament director Larry Friday at (443) 674 8362, (302) 438-1290 or fridayla@msn.com.
Housing Client Goes Into
Labor
In early February, a pregnant young woman who was applying for housing assistance began to have contractions. She’d never had a baby before, and was unmarried, so she was scared and asked some of the women in the office if what she thought was happening actually was. But she did not want to stop the application process. That’s how desperate she was. An hour later she was on the floor, and the contractions were much stronger. Then they were 2 minutes apart. The EMS team was called and an ambulance whisked her away to the hospital. Program Director Sandy Betley followed up with her to finalize the application. This was not a typical day at LCS!