We hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Year’s celebrating and spending time with your family and friends.

As we look forward to all the great possibilities of 2012, we would like to stop and take some time to thank everyone who helped to make 2011 such an incredible year at the Hope Center.

As the economy continues to weaken and many people are struggling, we are so pleased to say that our friends and supporters have helped us keep the lights on and the pantry stocked.

Our pantry is literally overflowing with food that will help us feed our residents, transient guests and anyone in the community who needs a meal. Along with the hot meals that we serve, our pantry is also the staging point for the hundreds of food bags that we will give out to families in need in our community.

In addition to the tons of food we’ve been given, our Sorting Room is happy to report that the donations of clothing, shoes and housewares have been steady, providing us with the much needed items to keep our stores stocked, which helps to keep our doors open to people in need. And as the clothing and housewares become available, we’ve been able to provide free items to families and individuals in desperate need.

We also want to thank all the churches and groups that hosted the evening chapel service and meal for our residents and guests each month. This is a huge blessing to our program and it’s a great support for our residents as they look forward to seeing the churches and interacting with everyone each month.

And we don’t want to forget about all the hours that volunteers have given throughout the year. We had volunteers packing food boxes, handing out bag lunches to kids, working at our camp, painting and cleaning and serving lunch to the community on Thanksgiving Day. We couldn’t do any of this work without all these caring people who gave in 2011.

Last but not least, we want to thank everyone who gave financial support to us in 2011. We understand that it’s not always easy to give to others when you’ve had to tighten your own budget, but your generosity has helped to keep people warm, end substance abuse, feed families, provide a warm shower to a homeless man and give hundreds of inner-city kids a great escape in the summer…just to name a few ways your dollars have helped.