March 1998 Newsletter

Helping Hands Mission is now undertaking a newsletter, which will be published quarterly. We will try to inform you of what we have done and our concerns. Plus it is a time of thank you for people who have helped us out. This is something new to us, so bear with us while we are learning.

For our first Thanksgiving, we gave out eight meals to families. For our first Christmas, we put on a party for 22 children. Our thanks go out to Shop Rite, Stafford Township Police, King of Kings Church, International Vitamin Corporation, Manahawkin Baptist Chruch Senior Youth Group, Toys R Us, Village Harbor Civic Assoc., and the volunteers who made it all happen. The Times Beacon wrote an article about us, and we thank them for visiting with us.

One of our sources of income, which is the real backbone of support for us to help children in our own community financially, is our coin jugs. We cannot thank enough the following :

I cannot express how important these coin collection jugs are. As you know, all the money that we receive from these jugs goes right back out to the community to help children in need.

Helping Hands Mission is at a point where two concerns of ours are holding us back from accomplishing some major goals. One concern is storage space to keep supplies for when the call of need comes. The second concern is a Thrift Shop store front to turn merchandise into dollars to help children in need and to build a children's mission home. At this point, we are turning supplies away, which could help children in our community, because we have no place to store it.

We are unable to take on government programs, which would help the children in our community, because operation out of our own homes is considered a conflict of interest. Some of the merchandise that is being donated to us that cannot be used for our own mission purpose could be turned into dollars that could help children. I am concerned also that people find us usually through word of mouth, public service announcements on WYRS, or one of our pamphlets that we hand out. Having a set of doors open to the public would make it much easier for those people in need to find us. Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated and we are sure that God would bless the giver.

Just to clear up a major concern, here at Helping Hands Mission we are all volunteers. No one here is paid a salary or earns a wage. We have found some that have wanted to donate money to us held back because they thought they were paying someone's wages. I assure you that any money that is donated to Helping Hands Mission does and will go to help families in any way we can. One of our mottos is : "If they need it and we have it, they get it. If they need it and we don't have it, we will find it and then give it." We charge absolutely nothing for our services. This is why our coin jugs are so important.

As I said, this is our first newsletter. This is going out to people, organizations and businesses that have been directly involved with us. Our first newsletter goes out to 213 friends and supporters who have no idea of the joy that they have brung to families at times of desperate need when there has been only one jar of baby food left on the counter and was replaced with formula, cereal and baby food, a warm jacket or gloves when there was none, beds that have gotten children off the floors, a child with absessed teeth that is no longer hurting or to a family that was thankful that we were there to help when they lost their own child.

The volunteers and I want to take this time to thank you for what you have done and contributed to Helping Hands Mission and know that if there is a child in need, we will be there doing whatever we can to make it better. It's volunteers like Tom, Evelyn, Mike, Donna, Nancy, Fran, Lois, Lydia, Carlos, Joan, Lori, Chip and Shannon who go out and meet these problems right here in our own backyard and do a job well done.

In closing our first newsletter, Helping Hands Mission always has the open door policy. Feel free to call even if it's a name of someone for us to help, or we would like to stop by and visit with you and tell your group about Helping Hands Mission.

May this letter find you in good health and good spirits!

Thank you and God bless!

Wm. F. Beuckman, Sr.
Founder and Director

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