You never know....

Recently Neil was at his office loading a couple of full to overflowing trugs and five gallon buckets into his work van from his truck.  He often goes out to water and harvest before work and then drops it off at Helpline on his lunch hour.  We're pretty lucky he works for the company he does, the top management as well as the owner are very active in their own church and understand our mission with Grace Organics, so no one thinks twice when he loads 100's of pounds of vegetables in their various containers into his work van and takes off for the day. 
This particular morning a colleague from another division asked him what he was doing.  After Neil explained, the colleague said "Thank you for doing this. A couple of years ago my wife and I lost our jobs at the same time and it was five months before either of us found work. We have two kids and everything we ate for the entire time was from food banks or food stamps.  So, thank you. " Neil told me this story that evening and we were overwhelmed thinking about what it must have been like for the man and his family and how you just never know whom is in need and whom you're helping.

Grace provides funds so we can garden and provide fresh food for families like these. I can't imagine trying to raise two kids on canned goods or leftover produce.  It's important for people to have quality food to feed their families. Recently Phoenix,  Arizona Mayor Greg Stanton tried to live on a  standard food stamp allotment of $29 dollars a week and reported that he was tired, hungry and couldn't focus after a week.  More alarmingly he found that fresh fruit and vegetables became a luxury and he had to subsist on mostly white flour foods that filled him up and provided very little nutrition.  So thank you for helping us fulfill our mission to help our neighbors in need eat better than that! 
See you in the garden!
Mayor Greg Stanton's story:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/09/30/phoenix-mayor-hungry-and-tired-after-living-food-stamps-five-days
Helpline thanks the food bank providers here:
http://helplinehouse.org/index.shtml