Chamber Member Highlight Gospel Mission Continues Serving The Community Faithfully By John Villines, Chief Operations Officer, Modesto Gospel Mission
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or the last 73 years, the Modesto Gospel Mission has been dedicated to helping the poor, the disadvantaged, and the homeless in our community. In the tumultuous and chaotic year that was 2020, the Mission was forced to rethink how it provided services in light of COVID-19 best practices, to adjust its methods and programs to meet the needs of the “least of these” in our community.
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One example of such an adjustment was to mobilize resources to provide services outside the Mission’s buildings and off campus to those that are isolated, lonely, ignored, abandoned, addicted, or homeless. There are several examples of this development.
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“Senior care kits” were delivered to over 350 elderly throughout the city and surrounding towns who were sheltering in place, a Mission ministry that did not exist before COVID-19.
Block Party event on its campus. Finally, as elementary schools reopened the school year with distance learning, the Mission converted its Youth Center (closed due to the shelter-in-place orders) into a homeschool location where the children that stay with their parents at the Mission could do their school online with assistance from their parent(s) and Youth Center staff as needed.
Next, Mission staff and volunteers delivered 1,437 new pairs of shoes directly to local impoverished kids in their homes instead of holding its annual Back to School
The Mission worked with city and county school districts to accommodate these kids, and they were able to do school in a quiet and focused setting each weekday.
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