What a disappointment!!!!

(2) Texas Tech 21, (5) Oklahoma 65

I mean what can I say?  I’m not even sure that the Texas Tech team that has been playing all season even showed up last night.  It was like they didn’t even show up!  How does the #2 team in the nation get spanked by the #5 team.  This could have been the game that pushed Texas Tech closer to #1, but now I don’t think it’s going to happen.  I sat in my recliner for about half the game until I just couldn’t watch anymore.  It was aweful!  Well I just had to get that out!  Hopefully they can pull off a win against Baylor next week…if not I won’t have anything else to say!!

 

It’s almost over…and a few extra things!!

Today was box prep day for our Feeding The Multitude.  For those of you who do not know what that is…we prepare Thanksgiving food boxes to feed a family of 4.  They were refered to us by a pastor ar an agency like DHS!!  The process took less time than I imagined!  I’ll be honest I was kinda dreading it, but I was very impressed by our amazing volunteers that came out to do most of the work.  Now that the boxes are made, we must pass out all 600 boxes on Tuesday Nov. 25th.  That process may take a little longer.  If you do the math that 600 different vehicles showing up to St. Marks Baptist Church to pick up their boxes.  It’s really amazing that we are able to serve our community in this fashion!  We also couldn’t have done it without all agencys that collected food for us!

Now it’s on to Thanksgiving Day.  We have 12 turkeys and two hams to prepare not to mention dressing, green beans, corn, sweet potatoes and rolls.  You know your typical Thanksgiving dinner.  We expect to feed around 200 people that have no other place to go for Thanksgiving!  I am going to be very involved in the cooking, as I love to cook and I prepared this very meal last Thanksgiving when I was Kitchen Coordinator.  It’s gonna be awesome…and contrary to popular belief I am not stressed at all!  I tend to be kind of a Drama-King, but my new meds take care of that.

Having said that…I guess i’m comfortable enough now to tell you i’m seeing a psychiatrist who is working wonders!!  I love her!  She is helping me deal with a lot of things from my past and getting my medications to where I feel like a new man.  I don’t think I have felt this good “mentally” since I was a kid.  This next statement isin’t going to shock anyone who has met me…I have ADHD!  Shocker I know!  Well that all thats up with me.  I can’t wait to go home on Friday and chill with the family!  It’s going to well needed rest after these last two weeks!  Well I will try and blog about Thanksgiving Day soon after it happens to let ya’ll know how it was, but I know it’s going to be awesome and some really needy people will get shown the love that Christ has for all his precious children.

The Craziest Time of The Year!

Well folks like it or not the Holidays are quickly approaching, and things couldn’t be busier around the Mission.  Next Saturday we have volunteers coming out to put together 550 food boxes for our annual ”Feeding The Multitude” which helps families who might not have a Thanksgiving meal without the food boxes.  Then the following Tuesday all the boxes will be passed out to those families.  This is a lower number of boxes than last years 800!!  We had to tighten the criteria this year, so that people driving Escalades would not be eligible for a box.

Then there is Thanksgiving Day itself and our “Great Thanksgiving Day Banquet,” where we not only feed our own men, but actually go out into the community, mainly to popular homeless hangouts and pick them up and bring them back to the Mission for a good hot thanksgiving meal, pass out blankets to them and show them the love of Christ.  Last year we fed around 200 people, which took 15 turkeys, 3 large pans of dressing, sweet potato’s and green beans.  We will have around 16 volunteers here to serve and clean up, which we always appreciate greatly!  They are oh so faithful!  This year for desserts a 6th grade class will be bringing pies and touring our facility.  I commend their teacher for instilling in them a sense of servanthood!

After that it’s off to Dallas for me to spend the weekend with my family and relax!  It is definately going to be a crazy two weeks and i’m gonna need it!!  I’ll mostly be hanging out with my sister, she’s leaving for basic training in January for the Air Force.  I’m so proud of her and her decision to serve our great nation.  It’s going to be rough on me cause we talk almost everyday and if we don’t talk we at least text.  I love you Meja!  Well if I don’t blog for the next couple of weeks, the few paragraphs you just read is why!  I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving full of fellowship and love!  God Bless!

Thought ya’ll might think this was funny….

25″ Televisions For Sale

We have 45 donated television sets for sale for $50.00. These TV’s came from the VA Hospital and are in good condition and come with remotes. The proceeds from the sale of these televisions will benefit the Union Rescue Mission; a faith based non-profit organization helping the homeless, chemically dependent and victims of domestic violence.

 

CASH ONLY PLEASE!!

 

PICK-UP LOCATION:

2921 Confederate Blvd.

Little Rock, Arkansas 72206

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT

Justin Mendez

Director of Client Services

Union Rescue Mission

(501) 607-3837

justin@urmission.org

 

 

 

 

God’s Will For My Life

As I stated in one of my previous blogs, I had a pretty powerful God experience last Friday night.  I have known for a while that God had awesome plans for my life and I know what they were, but I was fighting them.  About a month ago while visiting my parents I had a dream that I was pastoring a church, needless to say, I believe this was direct communication from God.  Friday night…I submitted to God’s will!!

I asked God Friday night while I was on my hands and knees at the alter, crying like a baby to please tell me what he had planned for my life.  He answered!!  It was very clear to me what my next step in my walk with God should be.

I had already done extensive research on several different options, even though I fighting God about my future.  I looked into the Trinity Institute and several of the programs of study they offer.  One jumped out at me and i’ve carried it with me and haven’t been able to shake it.

Today through the help of my employer I enrolled in a program that would make me a Certified Professional Chemical Dependency Minister.  I am extremely excited about this new adventure!  I also have set plans for whn I finish this program.  They also offer a program in Christian Counseling and there is also a very good possibility of becoming an Ordained Minister.

I want to continue to do God’s work, working with the chemically dependant and broken men, that I am so blessed to work with everyday.  I need your prayers and support as I start this new and exciting venture that will someday impact the Kingdom of God!  God Bless!

One Awesome Day!

Today and Aaron and I went uo to northwest Arkansas to just get away from Little Rock, and too see the changing of the leaves.  For those of you in Texas…leaves are things that grow on trees, which I realize that there are not too many there.

I have never seen anything so amazing as all the different colors that one tree can produce.  We also drove up to Mount Magazine to look out over the river valley and just to take in all of God’s beauty.  They also have a lodge up there that is uber nice and has rooms for rent as well as cabins with patio jacuzzi’s!  I know right.

All in all it was a great day just to get away and and spend time with good friends enjoying the beauty that was created by God himself.

God Was Definately There!!

I experienced something tonight, that I probably haven’t experienced in my entire life!  Tonight was the Seventh Day Slumber Concert at 1st Baptist Church in Cabot, Arkansas.  I was really stoked about going on Thursday, but by the end of the work day today…not so much.  As a matter of fact I wasn’t going to go period.

We had 5 guys from our rehab program that had all decided to go, but I still wanted nothing to do with going.  I was going to come home and probably sit in the La-Z-Boy and stare at the TV.  At the last minute by BFF (Aaron Reddin) asked if I was sure I didn’t wanna go (still didn’t) but I went in order to get a guy there who missed the van.  God works in amazing ways!

After sitting through 3 opening bands (who were good, but not great) Seventh Day Slumber took the stage and it wasn’t long after that, that I believe my life was changed.  During the concert I heard the back stories behind many of the songs they have wrote and they were heart wrenching and some of them really hit home for me and many of the men who attended with us.

Towards the end of the service there was an alter call and I had already become convicted by God, but as usual I was being stubborn.  That is until there was an announcement that there were others out there that needed to submit to the will of God.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.

I went down to the alter, knelt and broke to pieces.  I have been running from God’s will for my life for sometime and I knew that that second alter call was directed at me.  For sometime God has been telling me that he would like for me to be in ministry.  I am currently working in a ministry, but God told me  tonight…”Thats not enough…its good…but not what I want for your future.”  I left Cabot in a sense of peace as well as a quite a bit of anxiety as to submitting to God’s will for my life.  God has given me, I believe the gift of decernment and wants me to use it on a larger scale.

So where do I go from here?  I made a commitment to God this evening to begin to work towards his ultimate Will for my life.  Stay tuned in the next few months and i’m sure I will be elaborating on my future in the Kingdom of God.

TO HEAR AN AWESOME SOME FROM SEVENTH DAY SLUMER: Oceans From The Rain  This song is amazing!

Below I have added a slide show of some pics from the event!

I helped make history…

For the first time in my life I took charge of my constitutional right to Vote.  What an experience.  I stood in line for at least an hour in order for my voice to be heard.  IT WAS!!  Last night Barack Obama defeated John McCain 349 to 147 electoral votes.  It seems to me that my voice was shared by so much of the United States.  I watched as black, white, brown and yellow Americans gathered in Chicago and across the globe to celebrate the upcoming change. 

It seems that over the past few years, our country has become divided and Americas have been batteling with Americans.  It blessed my heart to see so many people of some many different races and social backgrounds gathered for one cause…the great United States of America.

It is my prayer that in the coming months that the country continues to unify as we look toward the change of residents in the White House.  I ask God to give this new administration knowledge and courage to face the opposition and to lead America to a place of unity that we so desperately need!!

We have dropped the ball!!!

The past few months I have been working as the Director of Client Services at the Union Rescue Mission in Little Rock, Arkansas.  If you do not know anything about the Union Rescue Mission, check out our website at www.urmission.org.  In my line of work I come across the broken, the hungry and the addicted.  My line of work brings me in constant contact with those who are desperate for something, and they don’t know what it is.  The answer is Jesus Christ.

Now I am not in anyway stating that I believe myself to be anything like Christ, I am far from that.  It is my responsibility to show these men how to live their lives according to the Bible.  Basically what I am saying it is not only my responsibility as an employee of URM, but as a member of the church!!!  Too often the Church forgets these people and often turns their heads when they do see them.  I’m not saying all Christians are this way, but a vast majority are!!  Christians todays are far more concerned about building new facilities, getting together with each other and playing board games on a Saturday night or (and this is what gets me) taking up Missions Offerings and sending Millions if not Billions of dollars oversees and totally neglecting the hurting and the needy in their own backyards.

I learned today from Aaron Reddin that there is a major epidemic of neglect on the part of the church in the Tampa Bay area in Florida.  I was stuned to read his blog and to hear just how bad it is.  To read more about this issue go to his blog at www.aaronreddin.com.

I found this article on homlessness in the Dallas Observer…

Dallas’ reputation as one of the “meanest cities” in the country when it comes to its treatment of the homeless is either cemented or softened with this Associated Press story: Every night, the First Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue downtown is allowing up to 150 homeless folks to sleep in the church’s parking lot — which is to say, on the pavement. (That is but a small percentage of the estimated homeless in Dallas: Recent stats put the figure at 5,163.) Homelessness, says First Presbyterian’s Rev. Joe Clifford, “is a social problem and requires a societal response.”

Local law-enforcement officials aren’t terribly fond of the move: Vince Golbeck, Dallas Police Department Deputy Chief, tells the AP, “A majority of property crimes in downtown Dallas are caused by the homeless,” and that the department is going to look into whether the church has the proper permits for the sleepover. But the very organization responsible for the report about how Dallas and other cities criminalize homelessness is on board: Says Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, the church “should be applauded.” –Robert Wilonsky

As I close out I wanna leave you with this…..

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the same, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  -Hebrews 12 : 1-2

Pick the ball back up…and finish the race that we so selfishly stopped running!!

Mobilization To End Poverty 2009

Mobilization To End Poverty Video

This April, Sojourners (sojo.net) will host the The Mobilization to End Poverty – a historic gathering of thousands of anti-poverty advocates in Washington, D.C. Together, we will call on President-elect Obama and the new Congress to make overcoming poverty a national priority. 

 

We’ve already invited President-elect Barack Obama to address The Mobilization and we are working to secure his participation.

NIGHT ON THE STREET…I NEED YOUR HELP!!

 

 

 

Dear Friends,

The Union Rescue Mission will hold its annual fundraiser, “Night on the Street” tonight March 10, 2009.  The “Night on the Street” campaign brings awareness to our community about the homeless situation in our city and provides the opportunity to raise much-needed funds for the day-to-day operations of the Union Rescue Mission. 

To help raise funds for the Union Rescue Mission, I am prepared to stay on the street for one night on March 10, 2009.  Throughout the evening, I will be calling my associates and friends for donations; however, I would like to give you an opportunity to support those we serve by making your gift in advance.  If you want to join me on the night of March 10th at the River Marker Pavilion, then please contact me about your participation in this year’s event.  Boxes may be decorated with your company’s logo with a sponsorship level of $1,000.00

The Union Rescue Mission monthly serves an average of 18,000+ meals to the hungry and daily shelters an average of 190 people. Every night, some 28 children sleep in our warm beds instead of out on the street or in an unsafe situation.  We also provide recovery services to the chemically addicted and domestically abused.  Your support of the Union Rescue Mission gives to those that would have no other alternatives but to sleep on the streets is priceless. 

We have always been amazed by the generous response of our community, and today we are reaching out to ask your help.  Will you stand with us once again, to provide urgent care and lasting hope to the least, the last, and the lost?  Our recent economic woes throughout the country are forcing more and more individuals and families from their homes out into the streets and into the shelters.  Union Rescue Mission and Dorcas House want to be ably equipped to assist as many of those less fortunate as possible in our community, but we need your help.

If you have any questions or to make a pledge amount, please contact Justin Mendez at the Mission office at 501-607-3837.  Again, on behalf of the Union Rescue Mission, I thank you; and I look forward to working with you on behalf of this worthy cause.

Very truly yours,
Justin Mendez
Director of Client Services
Men’s Recovery Center
3001 Confederate Blvd.
Little Rock, AR 72206
(501) 374-1108 office
(501) 607-3837 mobile