So many of you responded to our need for reusable masks that we now have an ample supply!
Thank you!
To everyone who has given so generously to help keep us going as a safe haven for homeless men with nowhere else to turn during this pandemic, we say thank you!
Please know that while your financial donation receipts and thank you letters are delayed because of a staff shortages and the extra challenges we are all facing at this time, our gratitude is not!
You are a part of God’s rich blessing to us, and we thank you,
Pray. Please pray for our residents and staff. Please pray that the Lord will place a hedge of protection around the Mission and keep the coronavirus out of the Mission. Please pray for the health and safety of our residents, staff and their families. We had to lay off 6 staff members (almost 1/3 of our staff) and make salary and budget cuts to keep the Mission viable. Please pray that things soon return to normal, and we can recall our staff members.
Give. Our two thrift stores are closed which results in a loss of $30,000 – $32,000 each month. All of our budget cuts and layoffs will cover less than ½ of our lost income. We need your help to make up the other half in lost income. You can mail your check in or make an online gift.
Donate. Please donate gift cards (mailing them to us is fine) to the following stores: Walmart, Aldi, Giant Supermarkets, Target, Home Depot or Lowes. We still need to buy food, cleaning supplies, and facility maintenance supplies. We also need disinfecting wipes (Clorox, Lysol, or any other brand) and hand sanitizer (any size container).
During this COVID-19 outbreak, our shelter for men experiencing homelessness remains open. Please consider donating to help us at this crucial time while we provide services to men who truly have no place else to go. This is home.
Dear Friend of the Mission,
Wow, it has been a wild ride the last several weeks with the coronavirus outbreak. With confidence and trust in the Lord, we believe that God calls us to act in wisdom as we seek to love and protect the homeless men who live at the Mission as well as our staff and their families. We are instructing our men every day to practice good personal hygiene, we have canceled all volunteer service and chapel groups to minimize the risk of someone from outside bringing the virus into the Mission, we are routinely taking the temperature of our residents and staff, we are regularly sanitizing all high-touch surfaces, and men who are not feeling well are being examined ½ a block away at the City Health Center. While it is hard to maintain social distancing in a tight-knit community such as ours, we are instructing our residents and staff to not shake hands, to cough into their arms, to wash their hands frequently, to not touch their face, and to refrain from friendly hugs and pats on the back. And as a precaution for our entire Mission family, which includes you, we have canceled our Night of Celebration on Saturday, April 25th.
The stark reality is that the homeless men who live at the Mission have no place to go – the Mission is their home. Our residents are some of the most vulnerable people facing COVID-19. Many of our men have chronic health conditions that compromise their ability to fight off the coronavirus if infected. Our men are poor and destitute, they are homeless and do not have a place to stay apart from the Mission, they are unemployed, and they do not have the resources and social safety-net that most of us have during a national emergency such as now. We therefore need your help to keep the Mission open as a safe haven and refuge for our residents.
Please support us financially as generously as you can. We know that many of you are also suffering from reduced income and increased expenses (e.g., child-care because the schools are closed). But for those of you who are financially able, we really need your help. Our thrift store income is taking a huge hit, our church speaking engagements are all canceled, churches and schools are not collecting food and other needed supplies for us because they are closed, and donations of leftover perishable food from supermarkets have decreased because people are over-buying food when they shop. Above all, please pray for us.
By God’s mercy and grace, we know we will get through this. I encourage you to read, rejoice, and rest in the truths of Psalm 46 – we will not be afraid, the Lord is with us.
Pressing on with hope,
Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director
Dear Friend of the Mission,
Our 2019 Christmas celebration at the Mission was wonderful! Your financial gifts, gifts of new toys for the children and grandchildren of our men, gifts for our men and all sorts of other wonderful kindnesses made Christmas 2019 a delightfully amazing time at the Mission. Thank you for making Christmas for our men a time of celebration, joy and hope rather than a sad time filled with loneliness, heartache, regrets and hopelessness. Our men and their families join with me in thanking you.
I also want to thank you for your kind and generous support throughout all of 2019! You have given us money, food, good used items for our thrift stores, laundry detergent, personal care items, office supplies, over-the-counter medicines, paper products, cleaning supplies, trash bags, new underwear and socks, pillows, good used grocery bags for our thrift stores and a host of other blessings. You have supported us financially through generous cash gifts, employee giving programs such as the United Way and the Combined Federal Campaign, gifts of stock, donor-advised fund grants, employer matching gift programs, and gift cards to stores we shop at for the Mission. You do so much – it is impossible to send a thank you note for everything that you do for us, but if I could, I would thank each of you individually and in person. The Mission is ultimately not about programs or buildings, but it is about loving broken and hurting homeless men with the love of Jesus, giving them a hand-up and not just a handout, giving them a solid hope that changes their lives both now and forever. There are hundreds and even thousands of Mission graduates who are living good lives today because your gifts were used by the Lord to make a big difference in their lives through the Whosoever Gospel Mission.
With heartfelt thanks,
Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director
UPDATE: Due to our efforts as a community to stop the spread of the coronavirus, we have cancelled our previously scheduled annual Night of Celebration that was to be held on April 25th, 2020 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Willow Grove, PA.
Dear Friend of the Mission,
The Sears Christmas Wish Book! Every fall Sears would publish and mail out a special Christmas catalog filled with pictures of all sorts of wonderful toys. I grew up in the Tacony section of Philadelphia in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, and my brother, two sisters and I would eagerly look forward to the Sears Christmas Wish Book. To be honest, we would fuss and fight over who would look at it first. Since I was the baby of the family, I always got to look at it last. I always thought that was a bit unfair, but the Sears Christmas Wish Book was well worth waiting for. Of course, I knew that my parents couldn’t afford to buy me all of those amazing toys, but they were still fun to look at and imagine what it would be like to play with them.
Over the years I discovered and experienced for myself that Christmas is not about toys, cookies, and heart-warming Christmas movies (as much as I love them!). But rather, Christmas celebrates God’s greatest gift to us, the gift of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you might recall that on Christmas Eve of last year, four Philadelphia Eagles football players and their families helped to serve our Christmas Eve luncheon to our men. When they first contacted me about doing this, they asked me to keep it really low key. They said it so well, Christmas is all about Jesus, and not them. Jesus is the famous one – not them.
The celebration of Jesus’ birth is filled with unimaginable joy – “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!” Here at the Mission we want our men to experience the hope and joy of Jesus throughout the year and not just at Christmas. Christmas can be a rough holiday for our men. They feel like spectators watching everybody else having fun, but they are left out. They often feel a lot of regret and sadness because of the empty years that have passed them by. This is why we work hard to make Christmas extra special for our men. We want our men to know that God loves them, and that Christmas celebrates God’s love gift to us, the birth of His Son, Jesus.
As we quickly move toward the end of 2019, please consider making a special gift to the Mission so that we can give our men the joy and hope of Christmas each and every day throughout the coming New Year. Here are several great ways you can help:
Christmas will be here and gone before we know it. But through your kind and generous support, the peace, hope and joy of Christmas will continue throughout the New Year in the lives of our men. Jesus is the reason for the season, but He is also our hope and joy for the rest of the year. Our men truly do thank you for your kind and generous support.
As we finish out 2019 and begin 2020, my prayer for you is that the Lord will abundantly bless you and your loved ones with good health, much happiness and great success in all of your endeavors. Thank you for standing with us in 2019. Your generous support was wonderfully used by the Lord to impact 215 homeless men in 2019. Your gift also impacted their families, their friends and society as a whole as our men became responsible, contributing members of our community. Your support made a big difference, and will continue to do so in the days ahead.
Wishing you the joy and peace of Christmas,
Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director
Dear Friend of the Mission,
Thanksgiving at the Whosoever Gospel Mission is one of the highlights of my year. We do Thanksgiving up big at the Mission! On Thanksgiving Day, our dining room and chapel will be festively decorated. We start off with a joy-filled Thanksgiving Day chapel service in which we give thanks to God for all that He has done for us this past year. The heartfelt testimonies of our men, staff and volunteers are a celebration of God’s goodness and grace. With 130-140 or more people in attendance, we then sit down and enjoy a delicious Thanksgiving Day Feast fit for a King (the Lord Jesus Christ Himself!). Our Thanksgiving Day Feast includes roasted turkey, giblet gravy, three-cheese macaroni (which I make every year), creamy mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, savory stuffing with cranberries (which I also make from scratch every year), green beans almandine, buttered corn, rolls & butter, cranberry sauce, apple cider, and an amazing assortment of desserts – pies, cookies, brownies, cheesecake, and candy. And our Feast is an all-you-can-eat meal! We make sure that there is always enough food for seconds and even thirds.
And best of all, this delicious meal is provided for our men as part of our comprehensive and compassionate New Life Rehabilitation and Job Readiness Program. Our men are working hard at the Mission every day to rebuild their lives and be restored to society as productive, contributing members of our community. But Thanksgiving Day is not a day of work, it is a day of celebration and thanksgiving as our men reflect on all that God has done in and through and for them. Thanksgiving Day for our men is a joyful Sabbath rest of celebration.
Your support of the Mission helps to make possible the celebrations our men enjoy on Thanksgiving Day. While we work on the front lines helping our men battle their way back from homelessness, addiction and poverty, your faithful and generous support gives us what we need to give our men a hand-up, and not just a hand-out. Your gifts are a priceless investment in the lives of our men that will pay dividends for years to come. As we celebrate Thanksgiving 2019, please accept my heartfelt thanks for your support. Please pray and give generously. Every gift counts and will be used to bless, equip and help our men move forward in life.
Thanking God for you!
Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director
Dear
Friend of the Mission,
When you support the Mission, you are opening up life-giving, life-changing and life-saving doors of opportunity to the broken and hurting homeless men who come to the Mission desperately seeking help. Our men are mired in deep poverty and come to the Mission with no resources, no money and no safety net of support from friends and family. But the Lord raised up the Whosoever Gospel Mission 127 years ago to stand in the gap for these men – to offer them a future and a hope. We are always grateful for your much needed financial support, but at this time of year, there are additional ways you can support us. Here are a few of those ways that will make a difference in the lives of our men.
The fall also marks the beginning of workplace giving campaigns. Many companies and government agencies ask their employees to contribute to their workplace giving campaigns. The happy news is that through your workplace giving campaign, you can designate your gift to the Whosoever Gospel Mission.
Your gifts are being used every day by the Lord to change lives! Thanks so much!
With joy and thanksgiving,
Robert A. Emberger, D.Min.
Executive Director
