How God uses willing vessels: Bragging on our volunteers

Our community was CRAZY helpful this holiday season — even in the face of some real challenges!

“God knew our goals and needs and provided exactly what we needed when we needed it,” said Charlene Mitchell, StreetWise warehouse manager. “That’s not to say that there weren’t a few stressful moments involved!”

Our box packing marathon started in November with Gwinnett County social workers packing and StreetWise volunteers Harry and Terri finishing just over a week later. In December, one of our corporate partners Ally’s executive team built boxes, which Harry and Terri finished as well.

Here’s the tricky part: Because Christmas and New Year’s Eve both fell on production days, we had more work, fewer hands to help and fewer days to do it all. We also had fewer food donations than in years past.

We needed enough cereal boxes and dry goods boxes to cover

• weekday clients,
• additional appointments,
• three Working Family Pantries and
• our December Mini Mobile Food Pantry —
• not to mention enough reserves to get us through the first week of January!

This is where we saw God work and truly multiply our time and efforts. From November 5 to December 23, our partners and volunteers built:

• 1,150 holiday boxes
• 1,620 cereal and dry goods boxes
• 110 deli/dairy boxes

for a total of 2,880 boxes for our clients this past holiday season!

“At times, we were pulling donations off our truck, immediately weighing and sorting them and sending them straight to volunteer production lines!” Charlene said. “God has truly blessed StreetWise with volunteers and staff that have a servant’s heart.”