What a surprise blessing to receive the donation from the Christ the King Lutheran Church 2013 Annual Women’s Retreat. These wonderful ladies collected a offering for Meals by Grace in the amount $168.00! That represents over 1,000 lbs. of food for hungry children in our community. Thank-you for your loving gift!
Together we can make a difference in our community.
Suellen and Steve Daniels
Now before you start chuckling, let me just say, “I’m working on it” and I ask for a bit of grace here… God has NEVER, NOT come through. After all, this is HIS ministry! We always have “just enough” volunteers, food, supplies, you name it. But for some reason all I have to hear is that a group has cancelled, or might not be coming, or hasn’t heard of anyone who has signed up and I drop into “panic mode” – when the truth is, when it comes right down to it we generally have “more than enough”… Jehovah Jirrah – my God of “more than enough” – it’s ME that is the problem. (And isn’t that just the way it always is?)
Thank you to everyone who came yesterday, and to everyone who watched out for me to not do something to trigger additional back issues. Your prayers have helped tremendously, I am feeling much better today, not 100% but MUCH better. I appreciate each of you so much, not just for the time you give up to come and help feed the hungry, but also for the love you share with me and the encouragement you give me each week. There are days like yesterday when it’s hard to keep going. I am so very grateful for you each sharing your energy and strength with me and for the “staff” that work so hard each week to prepare everything so I can have a measure of peace.
Please be praying about our need for a fund raiser, we really cannot wait until next fall, but the time for a Spring one has crept up on us leaving us with little to no time to plan or execute with any measure of publicity possible. I’m new to this arena and unsure what is needed. If planning events and raising funds for special causes is your forte, please let me know. I’d like to create a small team of folks for whom this is their focus, to brainstorm and plan events. I’m sure there are MANY who would be willing helpers if they just did not have to be in the leadership roles, and I’m sure there are many who would like to lead and plan, but don’t have time for the day to day tasks…
Another thing to pray about is the newly formed “grants” team that will be meeting tomorrow night for training and strategy planning. Thank you in advance to those who are experienced and have agreed to come and share their knowledge, and thank you for the precious ones who have agreed to come and take on the task of helping us generate more grant submissions.
If you have any interest in helping us with any task outside of the weekly meal prep, please just let us know – we’d be thrilled to help you get plugged in to some additional capacity. We are trying to find ways to order our needed supplies without having to pay such horrific freight/shipping – any ideas on how we could reduce that? Perhaps someone could contact a few places and see if we can find anyone willing to cut us a deal since we’re a non-profit??? We like ordering from Webstuarant.com – they seem to have good prices…
Much to do – gotta run…. LOVE you all, thanks for all the prayers!!!!!!!
PS – did you see our new “donate” button on the website??? COOL who wants to be first to try it out? 
WOW! What a day we had yesterday. It’s hard to even describe it – between 102-104 wonderful volunteers showed up yesterday to help us prepare meals for our families. There are 2 main ingredients to our events – one, obviously the food, we need sufficient food to make our meals and feed our families. Two we need volunteers to accomplish all the work, yesterday we had an over-abundance of both! The entire day was such fun, no worries, no stress, just laughter and the joy of seeing more of God’s hands and feet than you can imagine. We even had about 25 volunteers that came and then left when they saw how blessed we were. To EVERYONE who came (whether you stayed or not) we thank you. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts!!! Please do not ever feel your gift of yourself, your time, your effort is ever wasted or unappreciated because we humbly thank God for you and your gift every time!!! We are ready, poised to begin the huge period of growth that is before us – 68 families. PLEASE be praying, this jump from 24 – 68 will be HUGE!! We will need addlitional funds, we will need to buy 50 more tubs, our supplies of pans, bags, lids, containers, foil and plastic wrap usage will go way up… oh and by the way, before I forget… John, the metal pans with lids are the most perfect gift I think we’ve ever been given!!! The food doesn’t leak out, or spill, they are so much easier to wrap, the labels stick better – what a precious gift it is, we’re horribly spoiled already!!! Please know how much we love and deeply appreciate your thoughtfulness and servant heart!!!
This coming SATURDAY is our next Meal Prep day for families with younger children – we won’t be using any hot things or sharp things so kids of all ages are welcome to come join the fun as we prepare meals to deliver to our families. This time we will be individually wrapping hot dogs and buns and portioning baked beans and macaroni & cheese. Everything will be pre-made and ready for dipping and packaging. Wonderful foods that are easy to work with at room temp (or close to it 
) We have a group of girl scouts coming to help, but will always need others to handle the pantry, the bread/desserts, the fruit chopping, the dishes, all the usual weekly tasks will still need attention . The Saturday meal prep days actually need more volunteers and leaders than the Sunday ones since each meal is created for each PERSON and not a one pan per FAMILY!
If you would like to become a team leader for one of our 5 Meal Prep day teams and take a rotation, please let me know. It is SUPER helpful to our volunteers to have established leaders to guide them each week when they show up. We’ll be looking to fill the team leader roles for the spring quarter in the next couple of weeks. We’ll be meeting to discuss what is the best way to accomodate everyone’s busy lives, would you prefer a quarter on and a quarter off, a rotation of every 2nd Sunday, or some specific Sunday, or a month on and a month off – we’re open to suggestions…
Volunteer appreciate day is coming too – cake, fun, gifts/awards, and a special performance by the Third Eye Dancers!!! March 24th I believe, more on that later…
Got to run, tons to do…..
Hello dear friends – no, don’t gasp, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth just trying to get my feet under me again. I am tremendously blessed to have 2 full time jobs, and two part time jobs. We are finally moving in the right direction to recover some that was lost, but the down side is I’m having time management problems. My heart is HERE, with you all, with Meals by Grace and the tremendous work God is doing to show all of us how to collectively be His hands and feet in our community, but many hours have to be devoted to the other tasks as well. He is blessing us more and more with resources, but we still have some hurdles to cross.
We still don’t have the final stamped drawings we need to submit to the zoning board. Andrew hopefully will make this a priority soon and help us move forward. I think often of the additional food we could store and additional families and children we could feed if we could just get that permit and get the concrete poured for the pad. Mark has completed his work of tearing down the walk-ins they are ready for transport, but until we get the permit and concrete poured and electric installed…. Pray for this please…
It’s time to begin thinking about a fund raiser – once the construction begins our stores of funds will be drastically depleted. The only way MbG has gone on so smoothly since I began working full time is by the tremendous blessing of Rosemarie and Bill and David (and others), but if we can’t replenish our funds I will have to cut back their hours/help and the work will suffer or perhaps even have to stop until we can afford to buy the food and fund the help we need. We are tremendously blessed and God will provide, the ideas, the volunteers, the means, and the funds if we but ask — Father we are asking, all of us are asking.
Winter has arrived I’m afraid, cold and blustery – I can’t help but think of our families with little to no heat, and insuffient clothing many times. Please be thinking of them as you go about you shopping – an extra blanket, or space heater would be very helpful. And socks, many wear multiple pairs to try and keep their feet warm…
Before I go I must tell you how special Meals by Grace has been these last few weeks – first we had our precious FLOOD students come and with them we made the acquaintance of a couple of dynamite Dad’s who we have come to love tremendously. One, John, who owns a few Zaxby’s (YUM) found out about our ongoing need for supplies, metal pans, etc. and filled our coffers with abundance. He also thinks he has a tomatoe chopper they’re not using - Bill our chef would LOVE that – talk about a time saver! Then there’s Brian, another SUPER Dad who’s already been back to help with his son and brings such joy to all the volunteers with their warm, loving presence. Brian’s agreed to be on our Board and help us with grants – Fay, help is on the way!!! It’s such a big task and one we’ve been way understaffed on!!! And finally, our other Andrew, our precious web-developer – none finer ANYWHERE; a dad of 2 plus a foster baby, had a part in develping Dr. Oz’s website and VOLUNTEERED to build out ours! What a blessing – I finally got the text he needed to him and am now working to get the pictures sorted out… wait until you see it – it is FABULOUS… but the best part of it is we will finally be able to receive donations on-line!!! Yippee! Maybe that will help with some of the financial needs – if you have marketing experience and could help us with ideas we’d LOVE to hear from you. Then there are the Third Eye Dancers – they’ve come before and we just LOVE them - such energy and excitement. They’re going to do a mini performance for us in a few weeks to celebrate our Volunteer Appreciation Day (we will eat cake!) and enjoy their performance in addition to getting the food ready and delivered to our families Date soon, perhaps we already have it and I just can’t remember right now – not much brain space any more….if you could just add memory like on a computer… HA!
Well as enjoyable as this time to chat has been, I’m way behind in one of my part time jobs that HAS to be caught up TODAY so I’d best get to it. Know that I am deeply humbled by the task God has given me, and deeply honored by your participation and help in making the weekly sacrifice of time and effort to see the children fed. May all that we do be for HIS Glory.
I’ve stories of the families to tell but must, for the moment move on…. stay tuned
Governing Board 2013:To be successful in 2013 MBG must have an active and vibrant governing board and to that end we are recruiting Board Members who would like to serve MBG in 2013. Below are listed the basic areas of responsibility for the board members.
If you want more information please contact stephen.daniels@mealsbygrace.org
1. Support mission and vision and if required purpose changes to either to Grace Chapel Church of Christ leadership team.
2. Select the Executive Director and Board Leaders.
The Executive Director is Suellen Daniels, and Program Staffing and Financial Manager is Stephen Daniels. Stephen Daniels is also the liaison to Grace Chapel Church of Christ leadership team. Accounting and banking is done by the Church finance team and MBG has a segregated account.
3. Support and evaluate the Executive Director and Board Leaders
4. Ensure effective planning
5. Monitor and strengthen programs and services
6. Ensure adequate financial resources
7. Protect assets and provide proper financial oversight
8. Build a competent board
9. Ensure legal and ethical integrity
10. Enhance the organization’s public standing
To create a vibrant Governing Board we will be expanding the number of board members in 2013 to 12.
I don’t usually share links to other things, but I’m feeling particularly emotional today (illnesses can do that to you) and one of our precious volunteers shared it with me so I just can’t resist. Thanks Faye! PS- you’re probably going to need a tissue, but in a good way…
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pLLMzr3PFgk&feature=player_embedded
Hope this works — thank you Precious Father, for this year of love and blessings from so many… enabling us to serve so many by sharing that love and abundance.
To everyone who volunteered in any way over the holidays, I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU!!! Last Sunday, the 23rd, we had the single largest volunteer turnout ever – 106 I believe was the count. There was so much to be done that looking at the list on Saturday I was quite intimidated to even imagine how we would get it all done, let alone be ready to deliver by the 2pm-4pm time frame we had told our families to expect. But God (who specializes in ‘more than we can ask or imagine’) had us coordinated, finished, out the door, and on our way home by 2:30pm!! What a treat
I’m working to keep that feeling of trust… I looked up our Volunteer schedule for this coming Sunday the 30th and realized the only small group we had scheduled to help had forgotten and most are gone out of town for the holidays — YIKES!!! I’m praying there will be SEVERAL of our newest volunteer/friends that enjoyed their time helping us in the past few weeks enough to hear my cry and come back to help us again. We need volunteers (30-50) every week, and as you can all imagine it is quite a challenge to keep sufficient energy behind that – ideas anyone? We decided long ago that if ever there was a week when we didn’t have sufficient help to accomplish our task, we’d just keep at it until we were done. The closest we ever came to that was the day we had sufficient volunteers to prepare, but not to deliver – sweet Carol Patterson (Ben’s mom who passed suddenly earlier this year) delivered to 7 families that day – she was an angel even then!!!! Miss you dear, dear friend – you truly are our Volunteer of the YEAR!!! PS- Ben will be our chef in a couple of weeks – be watching, we’re so proud of him
We also met, through divine providence I’m sure, a man who is creating a team to go disassemble our freezers/coolers and the oven and bring them back here – can you believe it??? I’m soooooooooo excited!!!! Then, the very same week God brought us Johnny Wilcox – how awesome is he??? VERY!!!! He’s not only offered to help us with our concrete work but is trying to help us with getting the final approval on our permit. We need to get this accomplished – yesterday we had to turn away a ton of fresh green beans from HOPE ministries because we had no cooler/refrigerator space for them. Then last night we heard about an offer from Trader Joe’s for a bunch of items they needed to pass along, but we couldn’t take them because we didn’t have freezer space – it just breaks my heart that God is providing us with resources as if we were already feeding the 68 families we intend to feed once we have the ovens, etc. but we cannot accept the gifts due to the hold-up with the paperwork. We found out this morning Sawnee EMC turned us down for the grant we had been short-listed for because we didn’t have the final permit… how sad is that? We started the application process over 3 months ago!!! 
Let’s talk about something happy instead (since I can’t change the government workers and their desire to frustrate the process) — let’s talk about our new Kids helping Kids program that begins in just 10 days!!! Woohoo – Beginning the first SATURDAY of every month we will have a special meal-prep session designed especially for families with younger children that want to volunteer and help us prepare our meal for our families in need. This meal will be created Picnic-style; sandwiches, chips, fruit, etc. I’m hoping our chefs can come up with some really nutritious, but kid-friendly fun meals for us on these special work days. The other weeks will continue with a hot meal created on Sunday and of course the delivery will occur regardless of the day… Please be prayerful of Meals by Grace going into 2013 as we plan for our expansion to help more families with hungry children to understand God’s love for them through the passing on of His blessings through our hands!!! Love you all, my God’s blessing be on you as you consider ways you too can help….. Suellen & Steve
Darin speaks to the Children of First Baptist.
Nine year old Darin tells the Children’s Ministry at Cumming First Baptist how he has been working doing chores to earn money for Meals By Grace so hungry children can have food.
Darin addressed over 150 Children and adults who were assembled in KidsTown to hear about Meals by Grace.Suellen, the Executive Director of Meals by Grace talks with Darin about what kind of chores he does to earn money for hungry children.
The evening culminated with the presentation of the generous gift of almost 200 boxes of cereal to Meals by Grace. This will enable Meals by Grace to supply our families with wholesome boxes of cereal for the next 5 weeks!
Watch in January as Meals By Grace begins its Kids Helping Kids program! Together we can make a difference in our community!
I received the following email today from one of our precious school social workers, “Suellen, I constantly have high school kids coming in to my office (and counselors offices) hungry asking me if I have snacks. The counselors have limited funds so they asking if I could find a resource to get a stash of peanut butter crackers or a snack like that to keep in our offices. Thought I would check with you to see if you had anything like this. Just let me know either way thanks for all you do!”
Friends we can solve this need — we need cheese crackers, pnut butter crackers, granola bars, breakfast bars, think folks — any HEALTHY snack. Do not let these kids go home hungry… If you think of other items post them here and we’ll start making a special needs list so you can print it out and take it to the store.
Does anyone have a contact at a Walmart? We could hand out the list to folks outsidee as they enter and collect their offering as they leave (would boost their sales – a win-win, what’s not to love)??? Anyone want to take this idea and run with it??? Love you all….
