Thanks to volunteers
I hope that each of you enjoyed your Christmas celebration, your time with family and/or friends. I hope that you had time to worship together and to share the bounty of God’s love with others. I had hoped to get this (information) out to you before Christmas but when the Christmas food distribution was complete I was so tired that my brain just did not want to work.
For the Christmas distribution, we packed on Monday the 19th and distributed food to our clients on the 20th and 21st.  During those two days, we gave out food to 736 families. We had a tired but happy bunch of volunteers who worked very hard all during this special time. Those three days were only the culmination of several weeks of preparation, getting ready for the distribution. A number of churches provided us with specific items for the distribution: green beans, mixed vegetables, rice, fruit, cornbread mix, mac & cheese, and yams. Along with these items, we gave out picnic hams to every family, in addition to cabbage for the Minor Brothers farm and sweet potatoes from the Hagerson farms. A special thanks to everyone who made the Christmas distribution a success.
We hope that each of you will have a Happy New Year. We do not know what the future holds, but we do know who holds the future. We have been planning for our January distribution since about the middle of December … Please pray for the volunteers as well as for our clients.
When we began planning for Harvest of Hope back in the Fall of 2012, the first thing that was emphasized, and continues to be emphasized as all of our plans are made, was that our clients would be treated as we would want to be treated. This is something that we continue to emphasize each week. Each person is to be treated with dignity and respect.  Each person is introduced to an interviewer by name. We feel that we have succeeded in treating our clients as we would want to be treated.
One of our clients recently asked me for a list of our volunteers so she could write a “thank you” note to each one. I told her that she could write one card and I would see to it that everyone saw it. The card was addressed to the entire staff.
“To the entire staff. I would like to thank all of you for what you have done for me. Since I’ve been coming here everyone I’ve met was kind to me. Your smiles, your greetings made my day. You made me welcome.God bless and keep you all in the very best of health. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Yours in Christ.”
And she signed her name.
That to me is a sign that we have succeeded. We have so many people who let us know that they appreciate what we do and how we treat them.
Please continue to pray for us. We thank you for your support in 2016 and covet your prayers and your support in 2017. Please remember that we serve Sumter County and are able to be your hands and feed to fulfill what Jesus said, “Feed the hungry and as much as you did it to the least of these, you did it unto me.”
Thank you for allowing us to represent you.
God bless each of you in 2017.
Sonny Pinckard, executive director, Harvest of Hope, Americus