ADVENTIST COMMUNITY SERVICES By Marshall Gonzales
“Y
ou don’t know how many lives you have saved,” a doctor shared with me after we distributed N95 masks to first responders and medical personal. As soon as COVID-19 raised its ugly head, we were able to send more than 2,000 N95 masks to the Seventh-day Adventist hospital in Hong Kong. We also helped various county emergency management directors, other nonprofit agencies and our churches around Texas with masks and hand sanitizer. At the same time, many of our churches stepped up their efforts to fill the ever-growing need for
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Biennial Constituency 2021
food in their communities by setting up drive-through food pantries. We were able to provide food pantry organizers with masks, hand sanitizer and gloves to protect their volunteers in addition to giving more than $35,000 in grant money to help them purchase food and other items needed to serve their communities. During 2019 and 2020, we continued to deal with other disasters, such as an earthquake in Puerto Rico; floods in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas; tornadoes in Texas and Louisiana and hurricanes in Louisiana. Clean-up buckets, hygiene kits,
