October/November 2007 Report

We met a couple former soldiers at our Nov. 14 outreach.
James (left) was in the Marines. Solomon was in the Army.
We thank them for serving our nation!

SCARS AND STRIPES

The Veterans Day parades across the nation on Nov. 10-11 have come and gone. While the crowds went home after attending the celebrations and ceremonies, some Veterans stayed out on the streets.

There’s a very good reason – they didn’t have any other place to go.

A recent national survey found that Veterans make up a disproportionate share of homeless people. The data indicates that Veterans represent roughly 26% of the national homeless population, but only 11 percent of the general adult population.

In all, 336,627 Veterans were homeless at some point in 2006. And the numbers may keep growing. The study estimates that approximately 89,553 to 467,877 Veterans are at risk of homelessness.

Locally, the percentage of Veterans in Oklahoma’s homeless headcount isn’t nearly as high, but several people did tell us about their military service when we inquired at our Nov. 14 outreach.

The study also reminds us of a man named Freeman whom we met on Aug. 9, 2006. He wept as we prayed for God to help him get past the torment from his own time in war.

Everyone knows that the wounds of war run deep – and now those scars are just a little more plain to see.

OH SO CLOSE TO 7,000

The turnout at our Oct. 24 outreach was our largest ever. We served more than 220 sack lunches. We have served 6,997 sack lunches over the first 47 Wednesdays in 2007. That’s already a 43% increase vs. how many we served (4,487) in all of 2006.

MAKING A MARK®

The U.S. Dept. of Commerce has officially approved our trademark request. We now own the legal rights and privileges to the name Filling The Void in the non-profit sector. This means that we'll be adding the following symbol "®" to our name in our communications. Attorney Dan Beirute at Winters, King & Associates Inc. was instrumental in helping us through the 2-year process.

GOBBLE, GOBBLE

We helped our crowd on Nov. 21 get an early taste of Thanksgiving-day treats by replacing the cookies that we usually use in our lunch bags with personal-sized pecan pies from Sam's Club. The turnout for the day was suprisingly low. Dropping temperatures and gusty winds probably drove a lot of the people we typically serve into the warmth of Tulsa's downtown shelters.

ON THEIR KNEES

We are so impressed with the servant hearts in the youth group at Tulsa's Central Church of the Nazarene. Over the past two years, they've helped us prepare sack lunches and take pins, needles and price tags off of the new clothes we hand out. What's more, they're also standing in the gap for us...on their knees. On Oct. 23, they spent an hour praying at the place where we minister each week. We've also heard that several of them are fasting for us over lunch during our Wednesday outreaches. Wow!