Center of Hope Representatives Mike Fortney and Brad Butler spoke to the Livingston Lions Club recently about the ministries the local organization offers.
“It’s been an incredible 2024 with inflation rates and two local natural disasters,” Fortney said.
“We started in 1985 by five pastors and five churches and was a very small food pantry. Now we have 15 churches and eight ministries. The Lord is working at the Center of Hope. New ministries are being added all the time,” Fortney said.
“The pantry is our bread and butter. We’re seeing about 1,000 families a month now, used to be about 60 per day, had 130 yesterday. Folks just can’t afford groceries. We get food regularly from the Southeast Texas Food Bank. The pantry is busy. This time of year, we try to ramp up what we give the families – turkeys, stuffing, cranberries, potatoes. That’s going on over the holidays,” Fortney said.
“Disaster response hit us pretty hard this year and there were two missions delegated to us by the county. One was to coordinate volunteers and teams and the other big role we play for the county is accepting donations – pallets of water, blue tarps, semis full – because the county can’t accept private donations. Food, water, cleaning supplies and clothing. Jonathan at Walmart gave us free sweatshirts, sweatpants and towels. That went on for weeks (following the spring flooding) and then came Hurricane Beryl and we began to try to fill unmet needs such as beds, appliances, repair and replace windows, wheelchair ramps,” Fortney said.
“Campaign 300 is our financial assistance ministry, and we assist 20-25 clients a month with utility bills,” he said.
“Our cancer support ministry was started by Jeannie Binns who had a real heart for cancer victims here in the county. Relay for Life kind of morphed into this. We assist with transportation to MD Anderson, gas, parking and meals and have about 70 clients,” Fortney said.
Butler then told a little about his experiences with Center of Hope.
“Over COVID, I began volunteering at the Center of Hope and kind of fell in love with the ministries there. The Emergency Health Ministry is led by Lynn Sasser. We took over for the Emergency Healthcare Board in 2021 and assist with prescriptions, gas and medical supplies. We have 10-30 clients a month,” Butler said.
“We also have a bus ministry in which we have about 30 people riding per month to get our services. Walmart gave us 27 pallets of new clothing, so we set up a clothing store for people that didn’t have clothes. We received about 2,100 new garments and about 1,000 pairs of new shoes. We had enough to even send some with churches on mission trips,” Butler said.
“We started Christmas of Hope about three years ago. It was formerly the Empty Stocking Fund. The program allows parents to come in and shop for their kids and wrap the presents and do so with dignity. We think it’s important for families who can’t afford to go shopping. We served about 1,000 children last year and we are anticipating about 1,200 kids this year,” Butler said.
“We need money, toys, gift wrap and people. We’re located in the old Big Star building, and I highly encourage you to come be a part and see what goes on,” Butler said.
