You can still help at Heat Respite!

We are in the final phase of Heat Respite 2018, but we are still going strong! Nothing, not even the heat or monsoon, can stop us or our volunteers or ministry partners! Our ministry partners supplied us with so much water, we are overstocked. That enables us to provide water for other hydration stations in the valley. We already donated 4 pallets to Saint Mary’s Food Bank, 1 pallet to Bible Baptist Church, and 2 pallets to House of Hope. Thank you!

On August 17 we had 32 foreign exchange students from all over the world helping in the kitchen, the Grace Room, and in Hope Hall. They are studying at the Scottsdale Community College and are part of a state funded exchange program. Thanks for helping and good luck with your studies.

Raffle

We are planning to have another raffle for our participants on August 31, the last day of Heat Respite. We still need more prizes. We have Starbucks gift cards and are looking for giftcards for stores in our neighborhood, like Safeway, Circle K, McDonalds, etc. They should be maximum $10. If you have an extra backpack or duffel bag that you don’t use, please consider donating it for the raffle (it would be our grand prize!).

Volunteer & Donor Appreciation

On September 2 we will have our Volunteer & Donor Appreciation. If you volunteered with or donated towards the Heat Respite this year, you are invited to the Volunteer & Donor Appreciation event.

If you have any questions about the raffle and when/where to drop items off, or to RSVP for the Appreciation event, please contact Sven at (602) 551-9234 or email at outreach@graceinthecity.com.

Ode to New Covenant Lutheran Church

Last Sunday I went to New Covenant Lutheran Church In Scottsdale. They are our biggest donor of water this year. Even with a relatively small number of active members (just about 300), they manageged to donate 600 cases (24,000 bottles) of water so far and raised already enough money to be able to donate another 98 cases every Friday until the end of August. And, to top it all off, they already started a designated fund for Heat Respite 2019! What an amazing congregation! Thank you so much!! Everyone I met was very appreciative and supportive of our mission to provide our less fortunate neighbors with a safe place during the day, water and food!

A big THANK YOU goes out to Bill Cope, who takes time out of his busy schedule running a small bussiness. Fridays is his only day off, yet, he still drives down from North Scottsdale to deliver the water to us. 

During the last week we saw a rising number in attendance. We went from about 150 per day to nearly 200! That means our Grace Room is running out of supplies really fast! We need shorts, socks, underwear, tshirts, pants, small (travel size) hygiene items, bags (duffel bags, back packs), shoes, sandals, flip flops, belts. If you have anything extra, please consider danating to the Grace Room. Thank you. 

Also, a big thank you to Jeff Jirele. He drives every Thursday to Midwest Food Bank in Gilbert to pick up supplies for our kitchen. 

Not only do we have amazing ministry partners, but we also have an amazing staff at Grace. Here are just 2 examples.

Lester Andrews, the caretaker at Grace, is there whenever something is needed, whether something is broken, a whiteboard needs to be hung, we need a quick Costco run, or someone needs to pick up bus passes. 

Adrienne Kaye, the office administrator, keeps all the paperwork in order, answers calls, and even takes in donations. 

All together, the staff of Grace with Pastor Sarah Stadler in the lead, is supportive in every way they can be to make this programm run the way it’s supposed to. Thank you!!!!!!

Upcoming Raffle : Requesting modest donations

On August 31, the last day of Heat Respite, we're having another raffle for our attending clients. We are asking for gift cards (maximum $10), bus passes, maybe even a backpack for a grand prize. If you want to donate something for the raffle, please drop it off at the office during bussiness hours, directly at Heat Respite at Hope Hall, or hand it to Pastor Sarah or Solveig Muus on Sundays after worship. 

If you have any questions, need a special time to drop donations off, or want to volunteer at Heat Respite (we still have 4 weeks left), please contact me at (602) 551-9234 or email at outreach@graceinthecity.com.

Thank you and GOD bless,

Sven Lenkewitz

Heat Respite Coordinator

Saint Mary's and Grace Youth on Deck at Respite

The volunteers said they would do it again in August. We can’t wait!

Thank you, Saint Mary's!

On July 25, 20 volunteers from Saint Mary’s Basilica prepared lunch. They made meatballs from scratch, cooked spaghetti, prepared garlic bread and salad. But if preparing wasn't enough, they also served the food! That is quite a difficult job, if you consider there were about 150 hungry stomachs waiting to be fed! But these good people were so amazing and managed it all! Thank you!

Grace Youth is giving to the community!

Not only do we get help from volunteers from outside of Grace, but also our own youth stepped up. We do have some amazing kids! These young adults just graduated from high school and are getting ready to go to college! But still they take time to serve our neighbors who experience homelessness! On July 26, six of our own recent high school graduates prepared a tasty lunch of hamburger, fruit and vegetables. Thank you Grace Youth, and supervisors Andrea Sigala and Marlene Haller.

Heat Respite at Midpoint

During the last few weeks our attendance has been steady at approximately 175 people per day. While everyone comes for food and water (we use 20 cases, approx. 480 bottles per day), not everyone stays to enjoy the daily movie, or a relaxing afternoon in the cool, 76-degree atmosphere of Hope Hall.

Yes we feed, and we offer community, and a little entertainment in the cool, but that's not all. In our small way, we also are educators. Organizations like Terros visit regularly to perform free HIV tests. Our friend Vonda Bennett is here every Friday to provide resources on jobs, housing, medical, etc. Vonda shared with us that she was herself homeless in our neighborhood for two years, and made use of the resources the city had to offer... now she’s giving back to the community.

We are grateful to have received donations from all over the valley, from Gold Canyon to Sun City West. Thanks to all of our amazing ministry partners -- we can’t do it without you!!

On Sunday, July 8, Sven visited pastors Glenn Zorb, Annemarie Burke, and Chris Heller at Mountain View Lutheran Church in Ahwatukee, to thank them and their congregation for their unbelieveable contribution of water (400 cases!) and very generous cash donation. That is really a great accomplishment by one congregation! Everyone he met was so kind and encouraging of our ministry. Blessings to all our friends at MVLC!

Sven and Paul are also so very grateful for the amazing group of volunteers who donate between 6 and 12 hours every day to the summer's Heat Respite program. If you are interested in volunteereing or have questions about how or what to donate, please call the church office or email us.

UPCOMING EVENT: We are planning another raffle at the end of Heat Respite on August 31. We will raffle gift cards ($10 max, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Circle K, etc.), bus passes, etc. If you want to help with the raffle, please contact us.

Perspective from Trinity Lutheran Church

Morgan Visnaw and Kim Caputo from Trinity

An eleven member LWLM team from Trinity Lutheran Church (Fountain Hills) recently purchased supplies for 220 sack lunches that included ham and cheese sandwiches, potato salad, bananas, cookies and a soft drink. Team members included Amy Heuer, Ann Seward, Christine Colley, Diane Arnett, Debbie Olson, Grace & Darryl Kahl, Jan Visser, Kim Caputo, Linda Swanson and Morgan Visnaw. Funds for this program were raised from a successful garage sale at the church. The team prepared the sandwiches at TLC and a group of five delivered and served the meals to the hungry that visited Grace Lutheran Church in Phoenix that day. There were enough sandwiches for second helpings for everyone. It was over 100 degrees outside and our gift was most appreciated by all. We toured the facility and visited the beautiful church (the oldest Lutheran Church in Arizona) as well as their clothing room where all donations are sorted and made available to those who need them. Most items desired are men's jeans size 36 or smaller, t-shirts, personal care items, games and books.

Grace Lutheran Church opens their doors during the summer Monday to Friday from 8 to 5pm to provide a cool place for rest and relaxation. A breakfast, lunch and afternoon Snack are served, cool water is always available. Volunteer groups provide most meals and the church fills in gaps from cash contributions when needed. It was a rewarding experience to assist in this worthy effort. 

"Grace Lutheran Heat Respite Program’s mission is to provide a space for heat relief while building community through the sharing of community resources, meals, water, and ourselves in a place of being, belonging, and becoming."

-- Submitted by Christine Colley, TLC

2018 Heat Respite in Full Swing!

Week 3

The third week of Heat Respite is complete. This week our team served nearly 1,000 people, approx. 200 per day. We gave out more than 1,500 bottles of water, served over 2,000 meals (breakfast, lunch, snacks) -- a big Thank You goes out to our amazing kitchen crew: Marlene, Lori, Devlin and Frank -- but we can't do it alone. We also had volunteers including Anne Gardner, Brent and Sarah Smith, and volunteers from Trinity Lutheran Church in Fountain Hills. This was Trinity's first service at Grace, so a special thanks to them for bringing 225 lunch sacks, 225 servings of potato salad, and 228 bottles of soda!

What does 'Heat Respite' mean to our participants (some names changed)?

Moon: “It’s a place to get out of the heat and to hydrate and rest. People who help here are amazing. They make coming here meaningful.”

Zoey: “The love the staff shows -- Paul & Sven put in so much to provide a safe place! I can not say how much it is appreciated! Grace Lutheran Church is such a sanctuary!”

Glennis: “Heat Respite means to me that people can take a break and get the rest that is needed, to escape the heat. Respite comes from the latin word respectiv -- we almost always use respite as a time of relief, not a place of relief.”

If you think you can help out in some way to support this program, want to donate, or just spend some time with our participants, there are many opportunities to do so. Just give us a call at (602) 551-9234 (Sven) or (480) 388-0225 (Paul), or email us at outreach@graceinthecity.com.

4th of July Celebration 

Many of you celebrate the 4th of July with friends and family and barbeque. For many of our participants the people around them are their family, so together with Trevor's Vision, a non-profit organization from Peoria that hosts a meal every Thursday evening in our Hope Hall, we're planning a family-style B-B-Q for our community. The menu includes bratwursts from 'The Proper Beast' (a local Gilbert business), vegetables & salads, drinks. If you want to help out, have any time to spare, or have chips or other easy to hand out items, anything would be appreciated. Also, if you want to swing by and listen to a harmonica solo, or short comedy routine, please join us!

Gift Card Drawing

We're sponsoring a drawing at the halfway point of Respite (Friday July 20). We're looking for much needed bus passes (full or reduced fare), gift cards (Circle K, Subway, McDonald's, Einstein Brother's, Safeway,  etc.) -- please help if you can! Maximum $10 cards. 

Grace Room Update

With the amount of people we're serving, and the heat outside, we're running low on supplies for our clothing distribution room. Items most needed are:

• T-shirts and tank tops (all sizes)

• Men’s pants and shorts (30 to 36 waist)

• Deodorant

• Small toothpaste

• Soap and body wash

• Disposable razors

• Small shaving cream

• Men's and women's shoes and sandals, flip flops (all sizes)

• Backpacks

• Men's underwear (boxers, boxer briefs, briefs, all sizes)

• Women's underwear, bras, sports bras (all sizes)

• Socks (white and colored)

• Books, Bibles, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, chess sets, etc.

• Plastic shopping bags, reusable bags (you know you all have a bag full of plastic bags at home!)

Any donation is welcome, big or small!

Thank you and God bless you.

2018 Heat Respite at Grace Lutheran Church

Weeks 1-2

At Grace, We Are In The City For Good and Heat Respite is doing that on a daily basis! For the first two weeks in June, we had 1,451 entries for our program, including 1,235 volunteer hours -- that’s almost double the volunteer hours from last year! We have had some great volunteer groups donating their time, meals, water, and financially supporting our program. We could not do this program without all of your help, so thank you very much!

We would like to thank the following persons for volunteering their time and hard work almost every day of the past two weeks:

• Marlene Haller
• Frank Soto
• Lori Thompson
• Alex Thompson
• Theo Thompson
• Laura Thompson
• Tarvies Mayweather
• Ray Saunders, and many others!

We also had several groups donate food for lunches as well as volunteer their time with us. We are so grateful of their time and talents!

• First Church UCC, Phoenix
• Peace Lutheran Church, Peoria
• Trinity Lutheran Church, Fountain Hills
• New Journey Lutheran Church, Fountain Hills

The program uses 3 - 4 cases of water every two hours, and we would like to highlight some very large recent water donations, including:

• New Covenant Lutheran Church, Scottsdale
• Love of Christ Lutheran Church, Mesa
• Ray Rosenbach
• Desert Cross Lutheran Church, Tempe

Also, thank you to Veteran’s Hands in Action, Phoenix, and Our Savior's Lutheran Church, Mesa, for donating snack items several times over the past 2 weeks.

If you are interested in volunteering or donating to the Heat Respite Program, please contact Sven Lenkewitz at (602) 551-9234 or Paul Hansen-Mitev at (480) 388-0225, or email us at outreach@graceinthecity.com to discuss opportunities available for you and/or a group!

We are in need of the following items:

• Men’s underwear
• Men’s pants and shorts sizes 30 - 36
• Deodorant
• Small toothpaste
• Shoes (tennis shoes, men's & women's)
• T-shirts (all sizes, men's and women’s)
• Socks
• Disposable razors
• Shaving cream
• Lotion
• Soap
• Body wash
• Band-Aids
• Nail clippers

Any donation will help and is greatly appreciated.

Thank you and God bless!