“How many meals could you provide, and how many lives could you touch?”
For many families, Thanksgiving won’t be a day of feasting and celebration. It will be just another day of struggle. Hunger. Painful choices: Pay the rent? Or the utilities? Clothes for the kids? Or food on the table?
Thanksgiving . . . What’s your plan? Big meal? Or something simple? Lots of family and friends? Or something small?
For some folks, here in Tucson, the answer would be “None of the above.” On Thanksgiving, they’re going to be hungry. Or so short of food, a special holiday dinner is absolutely impossible. In fact, they’ll be worried about how to feed their children at all.
For these families, Thanksgiving won’t be a day of feasting and celebration. It will be just another day of struggle. Hunger. Painful choices: Pay the rent? Or the utilities? Clothes for the kids? Or food on the table?
But you can give them a beautiful meal this Thanksgiving — with a gift to the Gospel Rescue Mission.
This is our 30th year of offering STREET BANQUETS at Thanksgiving time, to feed hungry children and adults here in Tucson. Once again, we’re planning a festive banquet for the homeless and the hungry, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, November 21st, out in front of our Men’s Center on 28th Street. Because no one should have to eat their Thanksgiving meal out of a dumpster.We’ll block off the street, and nearly 400 volunteers will help set up tables and chairs, assemble place settings. We hope to feed all who are hungry . . . as a beautiful, practical expression of God’s love.
But to bring every hungry child, every family in need to the banquet table, and give them all real hope for the future, we need you. You’ve been generous in supporting the work of Gospel Rescue Mission, and I’m asking you today to once again share the blessings that God has brought into your life.
You know how diligent we are in collecting donated food and goods — so we’re able to provide a Thanksgiving meal at our Annual Thanksgiving Street Banquet for only $2.05. So every $2.05 you give today will provide another meal for a hungry child, a weary mom, a worried dad. . . .
Would you prayerfully consider how many meals you could provide . . . how many lives you could touch?
I’m inviting you to be generous again today because of people like Steve Otero. He was the son of a California police chief. Successful in business. But he was covering up an addiction. He lost everything. Spent five years homeless on the streets of Tucson, sleeping in alleyways, eating out of dumpsters, barely surviving. He knows real hunger.
By God’s grace, a homeless friend invited Steve to join him at our Street Banquet for a meal. Here, he found more than just a meal. He found new life! Steve enrolled in our recovery program and 18 months later, he was sober, clean, ready to start his life over. He faithfully served God as a volunteer here for 15 years — then began working as a cook in our Men’s Center kitchen!
Our Thanksgiving Street Banquet can be life- transforming for someone in need.
And there are a lot of women and men like Steve in Tucson right now. People going through deep waters, needing someone to give them a hand. For them, the Street Banquet will be a beautiful gift. Not just a meal, but an opportunity to connect with our services and programs, to help them get their lives back on track, and become self- sufficient again.
And most important of all, when they come here, they’ll find God’s love. Our mission from Day 1 has been to offer spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental wholeness through Jesus Christ.
I hope you’ll be a part of it all, by giving a generous “Thanksgiving gift” today. (And thanks to the Arizona Tax Credit, you can get a dollar-for-dollar credit — not a deduction — on your 2018 taxes — if you give up to $400 filing singly, or $800 filing jointly. This means you can essentially give for free!) Tax credit gifts can qualify whether it’s a one-time gift amount or cumulative gifts throughout the year. (See enclosed information.)
I invite you also to write a brief message of encouragement on the enclosed placemat and return it with your gift. We’ll use this placemat at the banquet, to give hope to someone your generosity has provided for, during this Thanksgiving season.
Thank you in advance for being a part of what God will accomplish in so many lives through our Thanksgiving Street Banquet this year! God bless you!
Yours in Christ,
Roy E. Tullgren III Executive Director
P.S. We’re just days away from seeing thousands of hungry people gathering right on our doorstep,
desperately hoping for a Thanksgiving meal. Please reach out to them with compassion today. Thanks again!