2016 Living Bridges Wrap Up

2016 Year End Wrap Up

     Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20 NLT

    I begin this blog/letter with Ephesians 3:20 because it is so true!  Almost 3 years ago now, Tony and I got together a group of volunteers and set out to answer God’s call to make a difference in the lives of people here in Valdosta.  Early in the paperwork process to stand up our 501c3, I was seeking a CPA to give us input on some of the paperwork.  A friend referred a local CPA and I called the gentleman.  He inquired about what we wanted to do with our budding non-profit and I explained that we were going to do a backyard type VBS where we would serve lunch to those who would/might not otherwise get lunch, we were kicking around the idea of offering a Trunk Treat (safe space to trick or treat for the kids), and we would like to do a Birthday Party for Jesus where we would send families home with board games to play with their kids.  That was seriously all we thought we were going to do!  At the end of my description of our fledgling program, the CPA took a deep breath and said his wife had founded a non-profit working with people in town in the same economic status getting food to students during the weekend when there was no school (and no free meals) and her non-profit had grown exponentially.  He went on to say that he could tell our ministry was going to grow like that and he did not want the headache of doing our IRS paperwork in addition to hers.  I thanked him for his honesty and chuckled to myself thinking: “Wow!  What does he know that God hasn’t told us yet?”  As we wrap up 2016, we can tell you that whether his words were prophetic or a lucky guess, our ministry has grown rapidly--so quickly it sometimes takes our breath away! We are involved in many things that were never part of our original vision, but I am fully confident they were always part of God’s plans for Living Bridges Ministry!  

This wrap up is an attempt to share the highlights of what God has done through Living Bridges Ministry in  2016. Time and space won’t allow us to share every detail of every program or you would be here reading forever! There are also a few pics of our events so our prayer partners and donors who live out of town can see what some of our stuff.  

We began the year with 1000 stuffed eggs and an Easter Egg hunt.  New Harvest UMC partnered with us and hosted the event since the park we normally utilize had soccer and baseball teams using their grassy areas. This was our first Easter Egg hunt and was a successful event with roughly 100 adults and children in attendance.

We also partnered with New Harvest UMC for a spring clothing exchange.  We were blessed by members of the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) who volunteered to come and help sort the clothing during their spring break!  Clothing was distributed to just under 50 people.  We also expanded our clothing distribution by making our clothing available to families who suffer loss due to home fires, to foster families, and other families in need through through agency referral. 

  

Once the early spring activities were done, we focused on getting ready for Kids’ Connection!  Our fellowship lunch on Memorial Day weekend kicked off our 8 Saturdays of VBS! Our Lego themed curriculum was a huge hit this year and the kids donated $34.10 to a program called Rice Bowls to feed hungry people in Asia!

We are so excited to announce that our 2017 curriculum partners with our local Habitat for Humanity!  We could not be more excited about this! During the VBS our adults will work on a home in the area on two

of the Saturdays and the kids will be collecting pocket change for offering to purchase a toilet for the home!

 During June, we were invited to share our ministry at a night of VBS at the Church of Grady County.  Their VBS was Superhero themed with a focus on missions and what kids can do to make a difference in the world around them.  After we shared about Living Bridges Ministry, the kids assembled blessing socks for the homeless!  Thanks to those at R&S Sports, Smith Drugs, and the members of The Church for the donations that made these blessing socks possible. Socks were stuffed with hygiene and snack items. Several rotations of kids and sock stuffing yielded 50 pair of socks stuffed and delivered to LAMP

in Valdosta for distribution

Summer also brought about the start of the Sunday night Men’s Bible study.  A group of 6-8 guys meet at the McDonalds near the neighborhood and study the Bible from 6-7pm almost every Sunday night!  On a couple of occasions, they have even had customers in McDonalds pull up a chair and join them. Unfortunately there are no pics of this group!

As the summer wound down, we were able to celebrate with the Tuesday evening Transformations class who had reached the ½ way point of the program. Thanks to volunteers at Park Ave UMC for cooking and serving us dinner!  Thank you also for the support of so many of your Sunday School classes in donating dinners for our weekly classes!  Currently this class is in the home stretch!  They have 6 more nights of class before they graduate!  We also were able to begin a Thursday night class in September.  They will reach the ½ way point in early February and should graduate in June!                                        

We had a fun surprise in August when we were blessed by the Atlanta Braves with a donation of 50 tickets to a game.  Funding from Park Ave UMC allowed us to only cover half the cost of the charter bus to Atlanta and they provided snack packs for our people.  We provided the three meals for the day.  Rain did end the game early, but we were blessed to enjoy 6 innings of fun before the rains came. Plans are already being made to seek tickets again this year to visit the brand new stadium! Let’s pray for sunshine!

 Also in partnership with Park Ave UMC and the City of Valdosta, we began a brand new program called “Work for Food.”  This program allows people who are in need of food to work sorting recycling for the city for 5 hours.  After they complete their shift, they are given a signed card to take to the church office at Park Ave UMC.  There the worker is given a box of food weighing 20-25lbs.  This program is restoring dignity to people by allowing a hand up instead of a hand out! Expansion of this program is expected in 2017!

August also saw the beginning of another new program!  Our Mom’s Connection group is a great group of moms who come together 1-2 mornings a month for food, fun, fellowship and discussion.  The picture to the right is of hygiene cans the ladies made at the December meeting.  Those cans were delivered to the Haven (women’s shelter) here in town.  We look forward to the continued growth of this group in the spring of 2017!

Fall brought another clothing distribution!  This one just blew us away (pun intended!)  We noticed during the summer that more than the usual amount of clothing was coming in, but we kept accepting donations, washing, sorting, etc.  When the week of the distribution rolled around we could see Hurricane Matthew was headed for the US.  Park Ave UMC had to relocate our distribution to another building so they could open as a Red Cross shelter for those fleeing the storm.  It became clear to us that although we set the date almost a year in advance, God had known the storm was going to be here and had planned for this!  The extra donations, the larger distribution space, more volunteers, and the list goes on!  The fall clothing exchange served over 200 people 91 of whom were here seeking refuge from the storm.  The following weekend we distributed to 87 more people at another Harvest fest. One final event helped 34 foster kids get clothing on Halloween!  In 2016 clothing was

distributed to nearly 500 people!

We also had a huge turnout for our Trunk or Treat in October with more than 220 people coming out to spend time with us!  This was over 100 more people than either of our two previous year’s Trunk or Treats!  Needless to say our supplies ran thin and our volunteers were busy!  It was so much fun though and we were thankful for the participation of the local fire department and police as well as our volunteers.

 Additionally, we were thankful that we did have enough candy and prizes to stay for most of the time scheduled.  God is so good to us!

November is a time when we start to slow down. Our only Saturday event for November is our Thanksgiving potluck lunch.  It is the only event where we request

our participants bring anything.  We provide the meat and volunteers bring side dishes, but we also ask our participants to bring some kind of side item.  It is at this event that we eat and fellowship, giving thanks for all God has done for the year!  Participants are also blessed with a sack of staple grocery items to help with the cost of groceries during the holidays.

December brought a wedding celebration!  Lynnel Haldeman and Jose Paz met while volunteering with Living Bridges Ministry a couple of years ago.  They hit it off and began dating.  In the fall of 2015 they got engaged and on Saturday, December 3rd, 2016, we  

were in attendance at their wedding! Living Bridges Ministry congratulates them!

It is our prayer that God will be with them and their children and that they will have a

life filled with love and many happy memories!

December also finishes out our year of Saturday events!  Our very last event of every year is the Birthday Party for Jesus!  It is at this event that we share the story of the birth of Christ, make ornaments, frost cupcakes, and parents receive board games, books, and toys to give their kids for Christmas.  This year brought record cold for this event and a struggle in our hearts because we know for some of our families the toys we give them are the only toys their kids will get for Christmas. Instead of canceling, we pushed the event back an hour to let it have time to warm up from the overnight low of 27 (which is downright cold in South Georgia).  Then we packed up all the gloves, scarves, hats, etc that we had and went out into the 45 degree morning!  We were not sure if anyone would come out!  70+ people later, we had to go buy pizzas because we had prepared food for only 50!  The coldest birthday party of history was also our largest attended by far!  We were blessed to have had enough craft supplies and toys for everyone and enough volunteers to run everything smoothly!

As you can see our year was filled with activity!  Words cannot express our heartfelt gratitude for those who pray for us!  The foundation of all we do is prayer and prayer partners like you are invaluable to us!  We are also thankful for our volunteers, donors, and participants! As our programs grow, the need for more prayer, more volunteers and more donors grows with them.  We thank you for your incredible support!

May God bless each of you in the year ahead!

Tony and Darcy Gunter

Honey, they have been very quiet! Perhaps we should check on them!

    Aren’t those always famous last words, right before you find your children have gotten into something they shouldn’t be?  Well, we have been quiet this summer, but for us that is a sign that we are working hard and are staying busy!  It was crazy how busy the summer was and how fast it went by! We thought we would take this opportunity to blog and give you a brief recap of our summer activities!

    We started this summer, as we do every summer with a BBQ kickoff for our Kids’ Connection program on Memorial Day weekend.  We were excited to see familiar faces and welcome back several families from our previous years as well as to meet new friends.  We also picked up some new volunteers this summer.

     Kids’ Connection used a curriculum called Some Assembly Required.  It is a curriculum that incorporated building with Legos into the lessons each time we met. It was a hot summer, but we enjoyed all of the Kids’ Connections which culminated with our pizza party this past Saturday.  We have noticed a drop off in our attendance numbers once school starts and will adjust from the 8 Saturdays down to 7 for next year.  This will overcome some of that while allowing Kids’ Connection to overlap Mom’s Connection for a meeting or two.

  Men’s Bible study is going well!  Tony has a committed group of about 4-6 men who meet with him at McDonalds every Sunday evening.  They discuss a topic of interest and what the Bible says about it.  We are so excited to watch these men grow spiritually!

   Two Sundays ago, we took a bus of 50 people to the Atlanta Braves game. We were blessed by the Braves donating all of the tickets and a church donated to pay half the cost of the charter bus!  We left early in the morning after a light breakfast in a local church parking lot.  When we arrived at the stadium, we tailgated lunch and served hot dogs and bratwurst, chips, fruit, and cookies.  Park Avenue UMC not only paid for half of the bus, they also donated 50 snack packed bags for our people containing Gatorade, plenty of snacks, and even some candy for the game.  The game was great through the middle of the 6th inning when it opened up and poured!  After the rain delay, we had to leave without seeing the rest of the game. We quickly served pizza for dinner and took a group picture before it began to pour again! Then we boarded the bus for home.  On the drive home, we heard that the game was rained out and we had seen almost all of the game play!  The good news was the Braves won!  That trip was so much fun and was so successful that we will plan to do it again!

  Mom’s Connection is our newest program and it started with the beginning of the school year.  Using a curriculum written by Group Publishing, we are navigating through A Year of Encouragement. The mom’s have discussed how to overcome stress, how to pray for their children, and how to encourage others.  We have a handful of participating moms and we look forward to even more joining us as we continue the year.

    Transformations 2016-2 began 2 weeks ago.  This newest group of students who are learning how to overcome poverty is our first all female class.  We are enjoying them so much and ask that you pray for Eunice, Tia, Tonya, Whitney, Erica, and Santavia as they work through this program.  Our first Transformations class of 2016 is in the middle of phase 2.  We are working on resumes, job interview skills, and character required for a job.  We love this phase because we are able to incorporate speakers from the community into what we are doing. Please continue to pray for Clarence, Franklin, Taffiney, Jocelyn, and Diane as they work to graduate in late January or early February of 2017!

    That about sums up our summer!  Time to get back to work!  There is a fall Clothing Exchange in 2 weeks and I am up to my neck in laundry!

Until next time,

Darcy

Thinking Outside the Box

God has given each of you some special abilities; be sure to use them to help each other, passing on to others God’s many kinds of blessings.   

1 Peter 4:10 (the Living Bible)

I am not a very creative person, in fact the discovery of Pinterest a few years ago was indeed one of the happiest days of my life!  It didn’t rank up there with accepting my Jesus as my savior, getting married or birthing 4 boys, but it was a special moment because I no longer had to come up with all my own ideas, I just had to follow the directions and copy the pictures “pinned” by others! If I have a burst of creativity, I can also share the idea with instructions up to Pinterest as well! When we founded Living Bridges Ministry however; the necessity of creative, out of the box thinking became immediately apparent!

Every program we run has its own needs for donations and volunteers and we are still growing and expanding so the needs are ever increasing!  Our prayer is always that God will bring what we need to do the things He has called us to do!  This includes both volunteers and donations.

God has been faithful in His calling of people to volunteer and to donate and we thought we would share with you about these “out of the box” areas of service and creative donations which might spark creativity in your mind about ways you can get involved!  On the volunteer side, in addition to the outdoor event service opportunities, we have several ways people can get involved.  First, we always have and always will ask for prayer and while that is not an out of the box area of service, it is the foundation of everything we do and we cannot stress enough how much we need your prayers! We have a volunteer who has written a letter to area businesses telling them what we do and how they can get involved!  That is helping us make the most of our Chamber of Commerce membership! We have another handful of volunteers that are taking bags of our sorted clothing donations to their homes where they wash, dry, and fold the laundry and bring it back so we can sort it into bins and distribute it!  This is saving us so much time (not to mention the cost of detergent, water, electricity etc) as we used to wash ALL the donations ourselves!  We had a group who came and sorted the clean clothing donations into the bins by size, season, etc.  This will make the setup for the Clothing Exchange go so much faster! We have had volunteers cook homemade dinners or purchase dinners for our Transformations class!  This is saving us so much money and time as we used to buy and cook 95% of our meals!  We have a volunteer who is helping by keeping one of our student’s child two nights of class each month!  This helps this student not to have childcare expenses on top of her other monthly bills. We have a lady that we email when we need to purchase something and she scans the internet for the best deal and lets us know where to purchase the item.  This saves us hours of research time and helps us to be even better stewards of the money donors entrust us with! Several people help simply by liking and sharing our Facebook posts.  Those activities boost the number of people who see what God is doing in Valdosta and they allow people to be invited to our events that might otherwise miss the information.  We alone, can not reach as many people!  Other areas of service where we could use some help include, writing notes of encouragement to the students in our Transformations program (a one and done service opportunity), stuffing and mailing flyers to our families inviting them to our events ( could do this one time or ongoing), gift basket assembly for those who receive homes from Habitat for Humanity (we have all the goodies and the baskets), and creating flyers for our events. There may even be things we need that we have not yet realized, if you have a gift or talent and feel led to volunteer, please reach out to us and we will find a place for you to use those gifts!

  In the donations arena, we do accept cash donations like any other non-profit, but we also collect material donations.  Some out of the box ideas for donations are toothbrushes/full sized toothpaste!  Now that we have added the Easter Egg hunt, we are distributing these necessities twice a year to our families!  We collect bottled water to hand out with our lunches.  It is not uncommon during the Kids Connection for us to go through 60-80 bottles of water in a single Saturday. There are 8 Saturdays of Kids Connection total.  We collect $5 fast food gift cards for our Transformations class.  These are used as incentives for our students to bring their homework, be on time, and participate in the class.  We have accepted used/new storage bins to store craft supplies and clothing for our programs.  We also take extra craft supplies to use for our ministry. We accept gently used and new toys/board games/children’s books for distribution at Christmas time.  We accept home decor to give as bingo prizes when we play bingo with our adults.  We also ask for new pillows, towels sets, tools, drinking glasses, kitchen items etc for bingo prizes.  People have also collected food items from our list (the list is specific because we make 7 matching food bags for each class) for our Transformations program.  

All of these volunteers and donations make our ministry possible!  There is no way we could have imagined all that God would do in the short time we have been around! We are so thankful for each and every person that God brings into our path!

Until next time, be blessed and think outside the box! :-)

Darcy

We're Heading Into The 4th Inning!

I just wanted to update everyone on what is going on with Living Bridges.  To do this I thought I would put it in terms of something I really understand as a huge sports fan.  As you may or may not know baseball season is just around the corner, opening day is next Monday, April the 4th.  Our season on the other hand has been going on for almost 4 months.  We started looking at our budget, scheduling events and updating our website at the beginning of the year.  In terms of baseball, we are about to enter the 4th inning and things are going pretty good for us.  We are leading, but the pitcher is starting to show the effect of all of the pitches he has thrown.  What does that mean in terms of the ministry?  Well, we have a very good first quarter of the year, but we are about to enter a crazy part of our schedule.  We are about a month into the Transformations class, a clothing exchange is scheduled for next month, a fellowship lunch is scheduled for May and of course we will be starting Kids’ Connection back up in June.  We know it’s about to get crazy and we will be looking for relief from the bullpen.  Yes, that is you!  We are asking for your continued support in the game (ministry).  First of all, please continue to pray.  They are the foundation on which Living Bridges is built.  Please continue to send your donations both materially and financially.  Even though we have done really well throughout the first quarter of the year.  We still need more to continue what God has led us to.  We have also started a new fund raising project.  We are selling T Shirts with our logo on them from now until April 15.  All the information about pricing, sizes, colors, and neckline choices is available on our website (www.livingbridgesministry.org) on the “Ways You Can Help” page.  If you can, we will also be in the need of volunteers once Kids’ Connection starts.  If you are interested in any of these opportunities, please call or email us.

Again, thank you for being a part of our team and helping us serve where God has led us.  Please continue to work and help spread the word about what God is doing in Valdosta through the ministry.  We always welcome and need more members to the team for even more support.

Thank You For All You Do,

     Tony

March Madness!

March Madness!

   12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14

  Every year, Tony and I stop all Living Bridges Ministry activities after the Birthday Party for Jesus in December.  We enjoy the holidays with our family and spend the month of January in prayer and resting up to be ready to serve again.  This year we scheduled no events in February either!  We used that month to network with other churches and ministries and to promote our Transformations program.  During the last week of February, we did two nights of interviews for that program and selected 9 students for the class.

 That brings us to March!  The rest is over and March Madness has begun!  No it is not the basketball kind, but I do get bonus points with the hubby for the sports analogy!  This madness, also known as the Big Dance, begins our whole year of ministry for 2016! We will be performing carefully choreographed moves through teaching our class, attending meetings, speaking about what we do, running our events, typing these blog posts, picking up and distributing donations and more from now until the Birthday Party for Jesus rolls around again in December!

  Our version of the “Sweet 16” entails 15 events (8 Kids Connections, 2 Clothing Exchanges, 1 Easter egg hunt, 1 Trunk or Treat, 1 Memorial Day weekend BBQ, 1 Thanksgiving Luncheon, and 1 Birthday Party for Jesus!) and the Transformations Class of 2016!  Our Elite 8 is more like an elite 9!  Those would be the newest students in our Transformations program: Diane, Taffiney, Jocelyn, Clarence, Samuel, Cassandra, Travis, Franklin, and Fathiyah!  They will be spending 8-10 months with us learning their way out of poverty and into self-sufficient living! Your prayers are appreciated for each of them! Our final four will be the kick off of our newest program, Mom’s Connection, during the final 4 months of the year.  Mom’s Connection is structured similarly to MOPS (Mothers Of PreschoolerS) and runs during the school year.  The difference is that the moms can remain in the group all through their children’s growing up years!  We are excited to be able to bring this program to Valdosta beginning in September 2016!

   All of these efforts are made for our Champion and Lord, Jesus Christ!  We are thankful everyday that He blesses us with prayer partners, volunteers, donors, and with those who share our information and help us get the word out about the things we are doing!  We do all that we do first and foremost to point people to salvation and eternal life through Jesus as their savior!  Secondly, we have a goal to make a difference in Valdosta and in the neighborhood we are serving in! We are off and running, pressing on toward to the goal!  Your prayers are appreciated!

Love, hugs, and prayers for each of you as well!

Darcy

Caution: Answered Prayers May Bring Tears!

“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Matthew 21:22

    Everything we do with Living Bridges is bathed in prayer.  Tony and I firmly believe it should be the foundation of all that we do!  Throughout our nearly two years in this ministry and for years in our lives before we began Living Bridges Ministry, we have seen God answer many of our prayers! From the start of Living Bridges, we have prayed that God would let us see the people we work with like He sees them.  We prayed that we would love them like He loves them.

    When we went to Florida to observe the Transformations program there, the people told us that after beginning their first class they had a waiting list to get in for the next one.  That sounded so exciting to us!  As we interviewed and started our class last year, we kept thinking: “Wow, what would it be like for this class to be so needed by our people and so wanted that they would need to interview competitively to get in?”  We had 6 slots for students last year and filled 5 of the 6 slots.  There was no disappointment there, we were happy to have a good size group for the manpower and budget we had.  As the class got further along, we started publicly sharing the results on our blog, on Facebook, and honestly with anyone in earshot who would listen. We kept talking and kept sharing the results of our students and kept thanking God who supplied all the donations we needed to keep the program going during its first year.   

    As we wound down the class of 2015, we began thinking and praying ahead for the class of 2016!  We prayed and expanded our budget to accommodate more students.  We prayed and networked with more agencies in town.  We prayed and asked God to send people who would need this class!  We prayed for volunteers!  A local Christian radio station had us on for an interview.  We shared information with a couple of local churches.  We spent more time in prayer!

    Monday and Tuesday night we will begin the interview process with more candidates than we have slots for students even though we have expanded our class.  As I have talked with these people on the phone and looked over the applications we have, I have cried!  I don’t know any of these people, but I love them and I want the best for them.  Many are desperate!  One lady cried on the phone with me when I called to confirm her interview yesterday.  She told me about how this program is the answer to her prayers and how she desperately needs to get to a place of financial independence.  I prayed with her on the phone as we ended the call!  God is giving us a love for people who are just names on forms, just voices at the end of a phone call, just referrals from agencies in town. I have figured out it is because they aren’t “just” anything, they are people who have endured a lifetime of struggle, who need change in their life, who need God, and for many/most/all this is the ticket they need to get the information necessary to change their life!  I cry because we can’t help them all and some will have to go on the waiting list!  I cry because while on the one hand the waiting list feels like success for us on the other it is a further rejection of  already broken people and I personally can’t stand it! I cry because they will have to survive another whole year before we can help them!  I cry because I know on Wednesday, I will have to be the one who calls them to tell them they didn’t make it in.  I prayed that God would break our hearts for what breaks His!  I cry because He answered our prayer and my heart is broken for these people!

   So if you think of us on Monday and Tuesday, please pray that God will give us wisdom and discernment that will guide us in choosing the candidates who He would desire us to take.  Then on Wednesday, please pray he would give me the words to say  and the courage to speak them to those who did not get into the program.

And yes caution is needed when you pray because answered prayers can and do cause tears!

Hugs, love, and prayers,

Darcy

A New Year For Living Bridges

                                                    A New Year For Living Bridges

     Well,  here we are again!  We are getting ready to kick off another year of activities.  Interviews for our Transformations class are next week.  The class will start for our new students start the 2nd week of March and there is an Easter Egg hunt on the 12th which will be facilitated by New Harvest Methodist Church.  We would like to thank them for volunteering to host this event and others throughout the year.

     Of course, we will still be having Kids' Connection this summer.  Kids' Connection is held every 2nd and 4th Saturday June through September.  This is an opportunity for children and their parents to come out and participate in different events that tell several fun events such as crafts, games and story time to learn more about Jesus and what He has and continues to do in our lives.  We also feed everyone who comes out and provide needed items throughout the summer through giveaways.

     Another thing we do is hold what we call clothing exchanges.  These events are meant to give families an opportunity to come and receive clothes for themselves as well as donate items they may not be able to wear any longer for items that are more suitable.  The exchanges will also be hosted by New Harvest.

    More information on all of these events can be found on our new and improved website:  www.livingbridgesministry.org

      As you can see we have a very busy year ahead of us.  The Transformations class will be going on through the whole year.  Kids' Connection will be held during the summer.  There are 2 clothing exchanges planned and there are other luncheons and events on our calendar.  Please check it out at our website.  But, none of this would be possible without your help.  We are in need of volunteers, item donations and financial donations.  If you can help with any of these, please let us know.  There are several ways you can help.  Please see the "Ways you can help" page on our website.  Of course we do need these things, but what we need most are your prayers.  None of this would be possible without them.  Please keep them coming!!

     If you would like to know more about our programs, please get in touch with us.  We would be glad to answer any questions you may have.

In His Service,

Tony