Category Archives: From the Staff

Dear Friend of the Mission,

“Last year I was homeless and living on the streets during Christmas.”

“I had the best Christmas ever spending it with my teenage daughters who have invited me to be part of their lives after years of being an absent father.”

 “I have been in prison for 8 of my last 10 Christmases.  This Christmas my family told me that I am a new man, far different than the man that I used to be – I think differently, I speak differently, I act differently…it is all because of what the Lord is doing in my life through the Mission.”

 “The Mission doesn’t have to do to all that it does for us – new toys for our kids, Christmas presents for us, special meals and really good food that always fills me up.  Other programs for the homeless just take from us – the Mission isn’t like that – the Mission gives and does all sorts of extra things for us that it doesn’t have to do.” 

 “Last Christmas I was full of hopelessness, but now I am full of hope.”

     These are just a few of the heartfelt testimonies and encouraging words of thanks shared by our men this past Christmas.   Thank you for your partnership in making the Mission a special place for our men, not just at Christmas but throughout the entire year.  Your support truly does make a difference in the lives of our men 365 days a year.

As we begin a new year of rebuilding broken and hurting lives, thank you for your continued friendship and support.   Your kind and generous financial support is a life-changing investment in the lives of our men.  And as God changes our men, our men benefit, their children benefit, their churches benefit and society benefits as our men live out a brand new life filled with hope and purpose.

Thank you for caring and sharing so abundantly.

Many blessings in 2012,

Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director

July 29, 2011

Dear Friend of the Mission,
When a homeless man comes to the Mission, he usually has lost touch with his family and in many cases, he has greatly damaged if not destroyed his relationships with his loved ones.   One of the goals of our New Life Program is to help restore and heal those broken family relationships.   Here are just a few snippets of heartwarming stories of restored and renewed relationships between our men and their families:

• After being banned from his father’s house, Joe now takes his dad out to dinner and is given money by his father to pay his father’s utility bills.
• George now vacations with a sister that he never knew he had.
• Douglas recently moved out of the Mission to care for his elderly and ailing parents and to help care for his grandmother who suffers from dementia.
• Robert is raising his young daughter Helen and is providing her with an excellent education at a highly respected private school .
• Theodore is providing for and actively helping to take care of his son who suffers from autism; last November he brought his son to the Mission for our  Thanksgiving Feast.
• Paul loved his two daughters enough to let the foster family they lived with for
  most of their childhood years adopt them.  He rejoices that he is warmly welcomed into their home and is able to keep in touch with his daughters.
• Roy recently left the Mission before officially graduating to work as many hours as he can to make enough money to help his son attend college this fall.
• And Mike Sellars, who you read about on the enclosed second page, was invited by his sister in New Jersey to live with her until he could rent his own apartment.  Her kindness made it possible for Mike to relocate to New Jersey.

Your kind and generous gifts help to make these restored family relationships possible.  Our men thank you, and so do their families!

Rebuilding families with you,

Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director

May 11, 2011

Dear Friend of the Mission,

Way back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, we used to provide vocational training for the men in order to help them become financially self-supporting.  Some of the jobs that we trained our men to do included caning and rushing chairs, shoe repair, broom making and rag-rug weaving.   Those industries have long since become mechanized and somewhat obsolete, but today we still provide instruction and training to help our men get good jobs and become self-supporting.   Through our innovative Career Track Learning Program, we help our men learn how to use a computer, surf the internet for job leads, earn their GED, increase their reading and math levels, put together a resume, apply to vocational training programs and colleges, acquire necessary life-skills such as budgeting, explore this wonderful world that God has created and develop a life-long love for learning.  For some of our men, we even teach them how to read.  One especially touching story is about George who was at the Mission back in the 1990’s.   Sadly, as a grown man George was unable to read.  But through our Learning Program and a lot of hard work, George was able to read a story to his 8 year old daughter for the first time in his life.

We’ve posted some testimonies of how the Lord is using our Career Track Learning Program to make life-changing differences in the lives of our men.  As we often tell others, we want to give our men a hand-up, not a hand-out.  Thank you for your support which is helping to make all of this possible.
Thank you for helping to plug the unexpected $60,000 gap in our budget mentioned in our last newsletter.  We need your continued help between now and the end of our fiscal year, September 30^th, to plug this gap completely.  Thanks for your help in keeping the Mission going strong as a place of hope, new life and change for all who enter.  May God bless you abundantly!

Your friend and partner,

Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director

The official registration and financial information of the Whosoever Gospel Mission and Rescue Home Association may be obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of State by calling toll free, within Pennsylvania, 1 (800) 732-0999.  Registration does not imply endorsement.

The Career Track Learning Program is the educational component of the Whosoever Gospel Mission’s residential New Life Program for homeless men.

We’ve got some good news – the Feinstein Foundation will proportionally match your donations with their annual $1 million dollar giveaway during the months of March and April.  Although it is not a dollar for dollar match since the $1 million is divided up proportionally among all of the participants (thankfully large non-profits are limited as to how much of the grant they can receive out of consideration for smaller organizations such as ours), it nevertheless is a great opportunity to essentially receive free money from the Feinstein Foundation.  Thanks for keeping this matching grant opportunity in mind during the next two months.  Every dollar you give will be worth more than a dollar through this matching grant during the months of March and April.

Plus, all your donations of non-perishable food items given during the months of March and April will also be counted at $1 a piece toward the challenge grant.