October 2014 Newsletter

You might be asking, where have you been?

Believe it or not, BUSY! Helping Hands has delivered food and resale items to Robbins Area Christian Ministries several times in the last 4 months. That ministry is feeding and meeting the needs of 500 families per month now. Yes, 500 families, and they do a great job of record keeping. They know how many adults and children per household and the income per household. That way the same people don’t get all the help. The second hand store sells a lot of goods and that money goes back in to the funds to help the needy. Helping Hands not only helps buying food, but we also have been able to get funding and donations for them through other avenues.

We have shipped another shipment to Honduras that arrived about 2 weeks ago now. A lot of gym equipment was on this load which the folks in Honduras will use to open a gym and a rehabilitation location. This load consisted of 23 pallets of supplies which also included shoes, clothing, furniture, medical equipment, toys and school supplies. This was, once again, shipped through the US Military. We will probably do another smaller shipment soon that will include school books for the new school year which will begin in February, 2015.

Israel: Our shipment for Israel should have already been gone but we had a promise of a lot of really nice clothing. We contacted the shipper in New York and told them what was promised and he said to just hold off till all the clothing was here and we could do it all at one time. They are now accepting nice furniture in the shipment because so many people lost all they had in the bombings.

Helping Hands is still fielding a lot of request from local home care agencies for potty chairs, walkers, diapers, blood pressure cuffs, wheel chairs, shower chairs and transfer benches. We’ve also helped with hospital beds, mattresses and other items. We were recently contacted by a local nurse asking if we had a wheelchair with foot rests for one of her patients. She had a Spanish speaking patient who had a stroke and was in the hospital. His family wanted to return him to Mexico to see his family since he only had a short time to live. I checked at the warehouse and delivered a wheelchair to her at the hospital. She told me the family just could not believe someone that did not know them would be so kind and ask no payment. She told me there were a lot of tears of joy and thanksgiving in that hospital room. That’s what we do!!!

Helping Hands has gotten pretty low in funds, so we have rented half of our warehouse to a friend that needed a little more space. We have lost a lot of funding due to the economy and some people have just lost interest, I guess. The need is still great and we are continuing to do all that we can with what God has and is giving us. We only make absolutely necessary trips and we have to be sure of what we are picking up from folks that want to donate items. We also try to get more people to drop items off at the warehouse. We are doing what we can to still be able to meet the needs as long as possible. This ministry is in God’s hands, he called Donna and I to this in 1996 when we established Helping Hands, he even named it. So, it belongs to him, we just manage Helping Hands, along with our Board of Directors, of course. We will continue to do what God says till He says we’re done. And if that day comes, it’s because he has something new for us and we’ll work just as hard for that as we did for Helping Hands.

Tony and Donna Haywood

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