So Far in 2021... — Furnishing Families of Texas

HELLOOO!! WE HAVE A HUGE UPDATE!

We are SO thrilled to announce that Furnishing Families NOW COMPLETELY OWNS a 26 ft. TRUCK! And we were able to pay cash for it! This has been a DREAM since the ministry’s inception!

Thank you to our friends David and DeLinda Nolan for giving us a great deal on his liftgate equipped freightliner! He drove it from San Antonio to us in Keller and helped our team become familiarized with how it works.

We also send MASSIVE GRATITUDE to Gateway Church for partnering with us in providing a sizable portion of the payment towards our TRUCK! And finally, THANK YOU to our donors who, too, made this dream a reality!!

Fortunately, Drew Lindley, one of our guys, has a history with driving school buses and has driven the rented 26 ft. Penske trucks before, so he’s ready for the task! (Drew shown here driving Jacob Ramsey and Malakey Zananiri to the dump). We can’t use all the contributions we receive, because sometimes people donate their garbage.

Previously, we would normally borrow a 16 ft truck from our realtor friends at Shelley Green and The Green Team in Burleson or rent a 16 or 26 ft truck from Penske for a day or two at a time because of availability or accumulative cost, respectively. This truck opens up a whole new range of possibilities for how many people we can touch and how often!

A lot has happened in Furnishing Families since you’ve last heard from us, and we want to give you ALL the updates!! We were able to make great strides in our growth and impact. This year alone, we have provided over 50 families with furniture, bedding, and housewares estimated in value of at least $52,500 dollars! Pictured below is one of our classic “Before and After” shots from a delivery. Still needs art and an area rug...but that’s on the way!

We have always seen a big need for food/drinks in the communities we serve, as well, and we have begun to consistently expand our reach in this category! Year to date, we have distributed approximately 30 pallets of food!! We have continued our partnership with The Goodness Project and this month have begun a new partnership with Noble Life Outreach. We are now being resourced by each organization a couple times averaged each month and have obtained pallets of food (roughly 41-70 boxes/pallet) this quarter, usually accompanied with pallets of boxes of milk or cases of water. Soon after receiving them, we usually immediately dispense it all to communities in need and/or other organizations in our area who help give them out!

The Winter Storm

Our practice at food distribution came in handy this past February in response to the Texas winter storm! Our friends, the Lapp brothers from Pennsylvania heard about the power outages and water contamination/scarcity hitting communities already economically struggling. In response, The Lapp’s organization Blessings Of Hope sent 12 SEMI TRUCKLOADS of food and water over the course of 2 weeks to Texas all the way from the North East! That’s about 370,000 MEALS! They connected with Gateway Church in Grand Prairie and The Goodness Project as a distribution channel for our region. Over the course of a week, we received from both locations about 400 boxes of food and 300 cases of water! We first brought these resources to neighborhoods without prolonged power and water that we have served in the past. In addition to our regular hired help, Terri rallied an army of volunteers to help distribute the goods as, well!

Speaking of volunteers, year to date, we have had over 20 people log over 1000 hours! We love how so many people are starting to rally around this mission!!

Thank you, Terri Byrd, for volunteering your time and overseeing this aspect of the ministry! Terri is a full time volunteer staff and has volunteered over 800 hours so far this year!

Our other partners at Garland Dream Center have also made an impact this year, too!

Shannon Mikle connected us with a donation of about 50 bicycles from their neighboring Walmart! We are GEARING UP (pun intended) to fix some of the bikes that were broken from the donation and distribute the bulk of the collection this year! So many families have asked us about bikes, so this meets a desire!

Another one of the BIGGEST advances in our organization’s growth this year came through our friend Wendy Hawley, pictured below! She lives in North Carolina with her husband Chad and 4 children, and she flies out monthly to help us. She has volunteered her time, over 400 hours so far this year, to set us up on digital apps that create better systems for our team to track inventory processing/distribution, to log expenses, and to communicate logistics in an organized way for the work week. This month, she added bar codes to the entire contents of all warehouses and storage units! Because of her contribution, we are better equipped to track the metrics of the financial impact from our donors, as well!

Headquarters has gotten more efficient and streamlined, too! We recently purchased collectively over 110 ft length’s worth (and over 10 ft high) of heavy duty shelves that Home Depot uses to display their goods. We’ve discovered that this multiplies storage and increases visibility of all the furnishings to choose from. In our largest warehouse, we’ve created two new rows and an expanded lamp shelving area with three levels of storage! In one of our smaller warehouses, we installed two rows adjacent against the two longest walls! This has opened up our capacity to store new items, especially toys and food pantry boxes in our large warehouse as we begin to expand the categories of what we can provide folks in need.

Finally, we’ve started to expand our channels of exposure, as well! If you’re on social media, come and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram! Click the social media platforms highlighted here for a direct link or simply look us up on the app. Follow us if you want to stay connected on a week to week basis; this is another way to see more regular updates in Furnishing Families Of Texas!

Thank you to those who have been praying for our ministry, donating furniture, volunteering, working for us, and/or have partnered with us financially as a donor!! This work could not be done without all of your contributions! It’s only been four months into 2021, and so much has been accomplished. We hope this year will be a year of increased blessing for your family and the families we all touch!

We are sowing seeds into the families of the DFW Metroplex, and this is the first region of the country to host Furnishing Families. Part of our vision is to plant this type of outreach in every state, nationwide.

Thank you for participating at any level!

As One!

Annabelle and Lance