Grant and Shannon’s Mission Year Newsletter for October¶

Shop www.GoodShoppr.com this Christmas!¶

At orientation, we were asked to raise our hands if we thought we could raise $250,000 for Mission Year. To a room full of college-aged kids, the amount seemed ridiculous. Waiting a moment, I sheepishly put my hand up. For a great program like Mission Year, I at least had the hope to think that I could raise such an amount.

After the session, Leroy came up and asked me what my plan was. In truth, I had envisioned a site like Good Shoppr a few years ago. At orientation, I realized now was the time to make it tangible.

And so I got back from orientation and conscripted my mom and a friend to help. About one week later we had www.GoodShoppr.com up and running. After another week and we had our first sales.

Good Shoppr is an online shopping site with a simple premise: 5% of sales will go toward our fundraising for the duration of our year (until July 2012).

The best part about Good Shoppr is that it’s an Amazon.com affiliate. Your checkout, discounts, shipping, and returns all happen through a name you already trust. It adds only one or two more clicks. There’s no markup on the items bought through Good Shoppr.

Please, please, please use Good Shoppr for your Christmas shopping this year! By doing so, you can buy great gifts at great discounts. Shop for goods, shop for good at www.GoodShoppr.com

Fundraising Update¶

Thank You! We have achieved our personal fundraising goal of twenty-four thousand dollars. Your support has meant so much to us as we’ve seen friends and family contribute. We take your donations as a personal investment in us as we grow to love our neighbors over the next year. We will send out personal thank you letters in the next couple months.

As we achieve one goal, we set our sights to the next. Please join us in helping our team in Peoplestown, the four of us, raise forty-eight thousand dollars. To date we are ninety percent of the way there. Will you help us raise the remaining five thousand dollars? All donations to us will automatically benefit our whole team.

Shannon’s Experience at Emmaus House¶

Whenever we meet people in Peoplestown they at first look skeptical of us and wonder why we’re their. All we have to do is say that we’re from Emmaus House and their faces light up. “Oh, yeah, Emmaus House is a great place.” Everybody in Peoplestown seems to have once been a part of some program at Emmaus House. Whether it be an after-school program or a summer program or they were part of the Saturday Arts program. Or maybe Emmaus House helped them find rent assistance when they were hard on there luck. It’s great to be serving at a place that holds such high respect in the community. I’ve been serving in many different capacities at Emmaus House. I’ve even been put in charge of the food pantry! But the area where I can see the most potential for direct impact is during the afterschool program. The afterschool program is small and there are only ten kids. Today I was helping Shunita, a 1st grader, with her reading. She was doing very well but you can tell that it takes significant effort on her part. So she often would tell me she can’t read it or she doesn’t know the word. I am very aware of her capabilities as a reader and I knew that she could do it. She then would tell me she had a headache and couldn’t do her homework. I told her that even with a headache she could still read. She kept pushing but one thing in my few years of teaching that I have learned is patience. I started praising her for every success she made while reading. When we’d come to a somewhat difficult word I’d say, “Wow, that word looks difficult but I’m sure you can read it because you are so smart!” Soon she was reading faster and faster and even began to enjoy the story we were reading. I’m sure that tomorrow she’ll push back again, but I’m convinced that patient, calm, positive attention will win in the end.

How to Make a Donation¶

You may either use the enclosed envelope or you can donate securely online. Whenever you make a donation, be sure to include our Team Member Name and Support ID Number. Those are:

Team Member Name: Grant and Shannon Jenks
Support ID Number: 11-9031

Visit https://www.missionyear.org/support/jenks in your web browser to make a donation online. Make checks payable to “Mission Year” and include our Support ID Number in the memo line. Donations are tax deductible.

Go Paperless!¶

If we already had your email address, we’ve automatically moved you to that list. This way you can enjoy color versions of our newsletter. If we don’t have your email, would you send it to us? Use the form on the Mission Year Tab . Allowing us to send you electronic versions saves time, money and energy. If you prefer to receive black and white letters, just let us know.

Prayer requests:¶

Pray that we reach our team financial goal within one month.
Pray that the relationships that we have already made would continue to grow and that new relationships would form.
Pray for Grant’s peace and safety as he begins to visit inmates in prison this month.