I want to thank each of you for your recent gifts to Golden Harvest Food Bank. Your act of love will last far beyond the time it took to write a check, or for the Food Bank to distribute the food to the hungry, or for a Mom to open the cereal box or open the can of vegetables she received: the love of God, as St. Paul says, “endures.”

 When my children were young I used to lay my hand on their heads, one by one, and pray a blessing on them before they went to sleep. So I thought that today, in this letter, I could do a similar thing for you.

 Lord God, I ask you to bless your friend because in giving to those in need they have proven their love of you and their faith in you, just as surely as the Centurion did in St. Mark’s Gospel when he said to Jesus, “Say but the word of command, and I know it shall be done.” Bless their family with health and safety. Let them be filled the spiritual riches of the Holy Spirit as they walk life’s journey. Bless them with continued faithfulness to your call on their lives so that, in the end, they may enjoy everlasting happiness with You in heaven. Amen.



Thank very much for your help Golden Harvest end hunger in our community. Every dollar you send  is multiplied by a factor of seven by the Food Bank to feed family after family, in town after town throughout our region. As groceries get distributed, hunger really does end for that family. Maybe they’ll require longer-term assistance or maybe not. Yet a start has been made toward change for the better. Your support is truly making hunger end in literally thousands of lives every month.

As we look toward Thanksgiving, a whole day set aside by our Country for the purpose of acknowledging God as the Giver of all good gifts and the Sustainer of all things, I am truly grateful for all the ways that the Food Bank is being used to help the women and men, elderly and children who endure much painful hardship. You are a partner with our food donor companies, the business community, thousands of volunteers, churches and county governments in making this great domestic missionary work called Golden Harvest a vital network of food assistance.

May our loving God pour His richest blessings upon you for your generosity!

Thank you very much for, supporting Golden Harvest’s mission of ending hunger. The problems besetting our country at this time are so serious that we are tempted to react by pulling back in fear or simply becoming immobilized by hopelessness. One of our donors asked me recently if his church had donated to the building fund for the new Master’s Table. I told him no, and after checking with the church staff, he came back to tell me that I could go from Sunday school class to Sunday school class and talk at each one. He concluded by saying, “Oh, well, that would be so difficult to organize. Let’s just forget it!”

I replied, “Wait a minute! That’s what I do all the time: talk to large groups occasionally, but mostly small groups…. After all, my role is one of a prophet.”  In other words, if we wait for the grand solutions to getting the word out, or feeding 100% of everyone in need, we will probably wait forever. But step by step, in being faithful daily to just what God puts in front of us, pretty soon quite a bit of progress can be made.

I’m now looking forward to soon proclaiming the message of the mission of Golden Harvest (and The Master’s Table building project) at our donor’s church – one class at a time. I am also so gratified that you, took the important step of making a gift to the Food Bank. Your support gives me hope, especially knowing that it is the fruit of your hope, too.

May God bless you for your generosity!

Our family had a most remarkable and wonderful summer and I hope yours did, too. Each year we try to schedule a week at the beach or the mountains and get as many of us (my wife and I and seven children with their families) together as possible. This was our fifth summer of such attempts and we found ourselves converging on the Mexican city of San Luis Potosí. Our son had wooed and won the hand of Senorita Saray del Prado, and their marriage took place in her home church. Only a few of us had visited Mexico previously, and then only the northern border area. Now we were plunging into the center of the Country! The U.S. media’s frequent stories of Mexico did little to allay the fears that one naturally has to cope with in leaving one’s native country. But our close-knit family pressed on, determined to support son and brother Joseph and his plans for married life. Grandchildren were packed up and put on planes. Others car-pooled and undertook the journey by land with car and bus.

Our son’s life, and ours with him, had changed dramatically in less than 12 months since last summer’s vacation! There we were, a year later, gathered in the Santuário de San José surrounded by our new Mexican family’s relatives and friends for a glorious wedding celebration! Moreover, none of the stereotypes of Mexico that our Norte Americano minds had conjured in our imaginations had proved true. San Luis is a progressive and well-ordered city of one million, with a large, beautifully preserved Spanish colonial historic center full of architectural gems of plazas and churches. Best of all, because it is situated on a high plateau of over a mile in elevation, we wore sweaters on evening walks and the temperature never got above 85 degrees during the day – a welcome respite from Augusta’s heat at the end of July!

Just as our family could never have foreseen this summer’s events with their challenges, surprises and delights, Golden Harvest couldn’t have foreseen the economic hard times and having to increase food assistance by 16%! Neither can we predict what this fall and winter might bring to those of our neighbors who are in need. And just as our image of Mexico had to be greatly adjusted, the stereotypes of who is poor in America and what families may need food right here in Georgia and South Carolina have been demolished as well!

Thanks to you our donors, the Food Bank hasn’t been caught totally by surprise. We’re not able to bring every poor family to the idyllic times of our week in San Luis Potosí, but we can go far in easing the pain of being without food for many in our community.  hanks to you, we have been there for the needy!  

May God bless you for your generosity!

There’s a cliché that begins, “Words simply cannot describe….” And we use it to express some deeply felt emotion. Frankly, I often feel that, in two ways. First when I am daily hit with the enormity of the need for food of the church food pantries and other agencies we supply. Second when we receive the generous gifts of volunteer time, of food donations from companies and individuals, and then, like your contribution, gifts of money to get the food distributed. I can’t describe how I feel -- both overwhelmed and encouraged daily, seeing God’s Spirit literally moving over the troubled waters of hurting lives in our part of the Country.

This week, the pastor of a church gave me a letter whose words really do describe in poignant fashion the reality of need many are facing today. He had received the following letter from one of the families helped with food:

“Dear Pastor ____, Greetings in the name of the Lord. I want to thank you (and you’r People) for the letter that I received from you on the 6th day of April 2009. it blessed my heart in a special way. I pray to see you soon The Food Pantry has been a Blessing to me in more ways than one. The food is appreciated. I don’t know how I could have gotten by without it. (But God knows) The Lord has blessed me with a seasonal job from august until February When I get back to Work in August I won’t see you at the Food Pantry for a While, I will rember you and all that you (and you’r People) did for me. I will come back to see you in dew Season I recived many Blessings by the fellowship in the Parking lot. Thank you for everything My Name is not important The Word of God is important It is Nice to be important It’s important to be Nice I am sincerely: RSR May God bless you and your’s”

I will add only my small word, praying that God bless you for your generosity to Golden Harvest and the person above who needs you.

Thank you very much for your generous gifts to help Golden Harvest feed the hungry of our community. You may think that you’ve only reached a little ways out to help someone. Wrong! Because the Food Bank’s distribution of grocery assistance reaches virtually every single community in the thirty-county region of eastern Georgia and western South Carolina. Your donations extend our growing food assistance programs and the outreaches we supply far beyond our warehouse doors.

Our area’s extraordinarily high level of poverty and the challenges of the current economic climate cause the need to remain great, especially for the children and the elderly. Thanks be to God, pastors of churches, county government leaders and interested citizens are growing more aware of the problem of hunger and are asking the Food Bank to help them organize new efforts in their locales. This kind of community involvement makes it possible for us to reach everyone in our service region.

Your support has a long reach, and necessarily so. You are critical to putting decent meals on the tables of the needy!

May God bless you for your contribution.

Thank you so much for the recent gifts you have bestowed to Golden Harvest Food Bank. I do mean this sincerely. This thanks is not a perfunctory, must-do, check-it-off-the-list-of-a-million-pressing-others thing to do. Your gifts provide the food for the hungry to eat! Your gifts help provide the meals for mothers with children, frightened and alone through abuse. Your on-going financial support provides the space for the homeless and addicted to be fed not only a needed meal but fed hope by volunteers who care.

The most important thing I do is to say thanks. First to God and then to you and all whom He inspires to join with Golden Harvest every day of the year, and year after year, to achieve our mission of ending hunger.

A quick story: I attended the funeral of a long-time Master’s Table volunteer; and one of those who rose to testify about the saintly character of Mr. Henry Banks was a young man who had shown up day after day. He was an addict, and told of how “Mr. Henry” would notice when he would show up, find him on the street and bring him food. The kindness of one of Golden Harvest’s volunteers literally saved this young man who is now regularly employed – and himself volunteers at the Master’s Table every day off that he has!

Yes, let me give you one more “thank you” today; and together let us give thanks for being blessed to share whatever we can with others.

God bless you.

These economic times provoke much hand-wringing, anxiety and fear. Every media outlet proclaims more news about the “downturn in the economy.” As far as I can tell, the Food Bank must be the only growth industry around. That’s because our distribution volume is up by 19% over last year at this time. The overwhelming numbers of families in need coming to our partner pantries and agencies are eloquent testimony to the crucial role that Golden Harvest is playing in our region.

Three weeks ago I visited Calvary Church of God in Westminster, SC. They had just opened up a food pantry outreach in a couple of converted rooms of their fellowship hall and that day drove over to Liberty to pick up their first order from Golden Harvest’s Upstate Distribution Center. As I arrived, the first family they had helped was carrying their precious allotment of groceries out to their car. I was close to tears as I realized anew another fruit of our work of 27 years in building the Food Bank as a bulwark against hunger.

Friends, it is your precious gifts that make giving and blessings like Calvary’s possible every day. Thanks be to God, our incoming food inventory has so far kept pace with the demand to “go out.” Your generosity is a direct result of God’s movement in your heart, and I thank you for letting your heart – and your checkbook – be moved! Depriving yourself of some of your money, thereby sharing in some measure in the hardship of the poor, can only result in many blessings from God to you and your family.

There is an awesome “grace,” I’ll call it, which has been sweeping through our whole region. It is a song of brotherhood and a spirit of giving, whose wave is washing up on the shore of Golden Harvest Food Bank. So thank you, because you are a part of this beautiful response to God’s call to open our hearts and resources to those in need. Other examples abound, but I’ll mention just a couple of them.

An elderly minister just inherited a fortune; he has always lived simply and doesn’t want or need the money. Today some of that fortune came ashore at the Food Bank to feed the hungry. Last week I attended a small ladies prayer group whose members give small amounts of money all during the year to help feed the poor. Even though their leader died this year, they kept to the tradition and invited me in to receive their donation.

My heartfelt thanks for helping to refill Golden Harvest’s warehouse, stretched so thin in these difficult times. I give glory to God for your support of the Food Bank’s mission. I leave you with thoughts from the sermon at Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome: “if at the moment of the announcement to the shepherds ‘the angels had known God in the grandeur of the universe, in the reason and the beauty of the cosmos that come from Him and are a reflection of him’ then that night ‘something new had happened, something that astounded them. ... The God who sustains all things and bears them in His hands - He Himself had entered into human history, He had become someone who acts and suffers within history. From the joyful amazement that this unimaginable event called forth, from God’s new and further way of making Himself known ... a new song was born, one verse of which the Christmas Gospel has preserved for us: 'Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace to His people on earth'. ... God’s glory is in the highest heavens, but His high state is now found in the stable - what was lowly has now become sublime. God’s glory is on the earth, it is the glory of humility and love.’”