It Keeps Getting Better!!! — Furnishing Families of Texas

We have so much to share with you! Since our last update, many more lives have been impacted through this ministry, and we have developed new relationships that will multiply our outreach capacity in the future!

Our First Big Outreach Of The Year

This May, we deployed a team of volunteers and staff to head up our first outreach of the year in Fort Worth, within a mile from some of the apartment complexes where we have developed relationships over the last couple years. We had a huge layout of tubs and racks of clothing, shoes, etc. alongside tents allocated for prayer, pantry food distribution, bike raffles, hair braiding, hot lunch, and a children’s play area! The Fort Worth Fire Dept. even came by with a fire truck! (The kids loved it). Many lives were touched and immediate needs supplied.

There, Annabelle connected with a gentleman named Pastor Vernon, who was helping volunteer in the Community Center behind us while people came through to vote for local elections. She admired the work he was doing in his local church in Fort Worth, where he recently became a pastor. She felt impressed to designate his church as the key distribution center for the clothes, shoes, etc.

I bring your attention back to the video at the top of the newsletter. That gives you an idea of the amount of clothing both new or slightly used and cleaned and pressed, both on racks and folded by size in bins. Within weeks of the outreach, we brought the remaining clothes to his church via our PACKED OUT 26 ft truck! (Our Team Pictured With Pastor Vernon Below)

(Left to Right) Back Row: Jonathan, Drew, Joel, Pastor Vernon, Lance. Front Row: Annabelle, Terri.

Our story here took a serious turn when Annabelle could not get a hold of Vernon via phone for a number of weeks. We knew that he was dealing with some health issues, and unfortunately discovered that he passed away within weeks of us dropping off the items. Vernon’s friend Pastor Edwin took over the church and continued the distribution work. Annabelle spoke with him recently, and he was pleased to share that almost all of what we provided has been dispersed throughout the community. Truly, you never know when it will be the last time you see a friend or family member.

Helping The Refugees

We have connected with some incredible pastors and leaders in the metroplex who have hearts for immigrants and refugees. One man Pastor Joseph, who oversees a church in the region, brought us to areas (as seen in video above) that he has been connecting with for a while, and we joined him by donating pallets of food, beds, books, and more! Multiple times, we came to this large apartment complex that houses immigrants and refugees from 20 countries in Africa. He also took us to his neighborhood in Ft. Worth, to also donate Farm To Table boxes of fresh produce, dairy, meat, etc. to families in need. (The Farm To Table government program officially ended in May). He later connected us with his friend in San Antonio who also oversees a network of families from Africa. We gathered a trailer full of clothes and shoes that Lance Jr drove to San Antonio to their home so they can distribute to their families in need! He was so grateful! (Pictured below)

Recently, we met a new friend named Pastor Valencia, who serves immigrants and refugees from Latin American countries. He is a Chaplain Coordinator of Baylor Hospital and also oversees a church in the metroplex. He has a strong network of Hispanic church leaders in the area.

We recently began receiving the charitable donation of odd lots of items from local estate sales that do not sell. We have begun to share many of the items with Pastor Valencia’s church. They send teams of 5 or 6 people to sort through and pack up the boxes, and we pick it all up with our truck and deliver the goods to the church, where they administer distribution within their communities.

The Mattress Firm Miracle

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We discovered that our local cost-effective mattress, box spring, and frame supplier switched owners, and the prices went up. This presented a challenge for our budget! With a sense of urgency due to our depleted bedroom inventory, we called Mattress Firm located in Carrollton, Texas, and explained our predicament to the manager Kiele Baker. We asked if Mattress Firm would be able to sell their mattresses at a lower price. INSTEAD, Kiele loved our vision and arranged for a SUPER GENEROUS donation of upwards of 150 mattresses and AGAIN, a second time 5 weeks later, with over 150 MORE mattresses for free! WOW!

A special thank you to our guys Joel, Jacob, Andrew, Chad, Landon, Lance, plus Mikayla for loading up the trucks! Another thank you to Annabelle, Gabriel, and Terri for capturing footage and delegating tasks!

Less than a day later, we were able to donate 50 mattresses to an organization called Heart4Kids founded by Pastor Jorge Zapata, who is part of Pastor Valencia’s network. Zapata drove up 8 1/2 hours the next day with his son (Pictured Above) and team and left with an entire truckload of mattresses and bedding! He is using these mattresses for his affordable-housing, tiny-home community called Colonia in the Rio Grande Valley, which is located on the border of Texas and Mexico. They jumped for joy in gratitude for the mattresses we supplied him with.

Check out the video below to hear the whole story!!

With over 100 mattresses in one warehouse, we soon had another need: ORGANIZATION! One of our beloved movers Andrew created a design to accommodate all of our mattresses neatly. This project required many shelves, wood, and a lot of manpower. A few days later, our friend Chris Zachery delivered 57 feet of Home Depot store shelves! They gave us a great deal, too. That day our guys assembled and organized our entire mattress warehouse. In the words of Annabelle Wallnau: “Joel, Jacob, and Lance Jr. knocked it out of the park!” A huge thank you to the guys for assembling everything and Andrew for designing and putting the finishing touches on the warehouse!

Thanks to Kiele Baker and Mattress Firm’s generosity, we now have the means to provide over 300 more people the BLESSING of sleeping on their own bed. Thank you, Jesus, for coming through for those we serve!!!

Other Highlights From This Year

Helping a family of 5 who had lost everything in a fire at their apartment complex! We furnished them with EVERYTHING they needed and arranged for one volunteer to take the youth shopping for clothes and another volunteer took the mom food shopping! They were SO grateful, and God is SO GOOD!! Almost everything we put in their new home came out of a stellar estate sale!

We were able to secure 2 cars to be used by our single moms! Each mother, Sunde and Tylynn, has been connected with us since early on in the ministry’s existence. We’re so thrilled for this life changing blessing. One of the cars was donated to our Ministry from another Ministry called BridgeBuilders and the other one, we were able to buy with one of our partner’s contributions! A side note: it occurred to Annabelle that both cars are Toyotas of the same color, and we didn’t try to make it happen that way! Interesting…

We closed out most of our storage units from the nearby All Storage and acquired another warehouse in our main complex, which is now the largest of them all! As pictured on the left, thank you to our friend David Nolan for giving us industrial shelves and for bringing a team from San Antonio to deliver and install them! It makes organizing deliveries so much easier. We also look forward to staging rooms in a portion of the space for selling online! (This warehouse is featured briefly in our video about helping families on the border with Pastor Zapata.) Collectively, we now have 9000 square feet of warehouses.

We were able to find a home within 2 miles of our base for our very own Terri Byrd! She used to commute around 45 minutes each way, every day! This rental property was formally leased by Stepping Stones, an organization in North Texas that addresses all the needs of at-risk youth. Our friend Lisa from Stepping Stones came on one of our move-in days and joyfully helped Terri get familiar with the property (picture above). This house was an answer to our prayers! Terri now receives a monthly housing allowance from the ministry after VOLUNTEERING full time over the past 1.5 years! She is an integral part of all we do.

Thank You To All Who Donated!

We could not do what we do without those who donate to this work financially and those who provide the furniture we use to furnish homes! We’ve also been really blessed by those who have donated their time in volunteering! We have been overwhelmed with God’s goodness through this work and have loved to see the up close reactions to the lives touched by love. We look forward to all the highlights we will get to share for the remainder of the year in our next update! Until then, we appreciate your prayers! If you would like to financially partner with us, please click on the donate button below, and if you’d like to volunteer or donate furniture, please email hope@furnishingfamiliesoftexas.com!

We pray this year keeps getting better for you.

With Love,

Annabelle Wallnau & The Team @ Furnishing Families of Texas