Grandpa Andy is Back at URM

Although it was hard to leave my new grandson, Elijah Solomon Bales, behind in Iowa, I am glad to be back at the Mission and back to work! I am now rescheduling my life and my vacation times around a little 7 lb. 5 ounce handsome miracle – my life will never be the same! Likewise, my bank account will never be the same! As my friend Warren Currie jokingly says, “My 26 or so grandchildren cause me to nearly go bankrupt each Christmas!”

Despite all of the challenges facing our world (after 48 hours in my car listening to CNN on XM radio, I am up on current events – believe me), I am excited to be back because we have lots of exciting things happening in the days ahead at Union Rescue Mission.

Union Rescue Mission is preparing once again to open the winter shelters in Burbank, West LA, Culver City, and here in downtown through added cots in our facility, and we have our biggest Thanksgiving event ever coming up with some surprises. I will inform everyone more on these surprises as the big event approaches.

Thanks to a wonderful open house and fundraiser by the Friends of Hope Gardens Family Center this last Saturday evening, we are preparing to complete the renovation of Hope Gardens Family Center’s kitchen and then take on the final two complex building renovations so that we can house 20 more families and many more children in the months ahead.

This next week we also launch a new Hospitality and Guest Services Department to better serve our men and women guests. We have hired Rev. Brenda Mitchell, former Pastor of Congregational Care at Bel Air Presbyterian Church, to lead our staff in living out our mission statement “…embrace our guests with the compassion of Christ” more fully. We want to greet our guests as they are - the princes and princesses, sons and daughters of the King of Kings.

Thank you for your continued support of this tremendous work and ministry at Union Rescue Mission!

posted by Andy Bales @ 2:24 PM