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How to help


classes, then joining the church. Faith’s immigrant members had been farmers in Africa. While life in Glen Ellyn was good, they missed planting and cooking white eggplant and other foods of their culture. Faith picked up on the desire. Today adjacent to the church stands the New Village Garden, also called Terimbere (moving forward). Families plant, water and harvest under the direction of Beatrice Nday- isenga, who is from Burundi via a Tanzanian refugee camp. Last year, its first, the garden fed 50 people. The immigrants took the remaining produce to a food bank, where some were once clients. Witnessing the influx of newcom- ers at Faith has touched member Sue Cheshire. “We are learning from and appreciating each other more and more in this journey,” she said. “And there will be more to come.”


‘Chasm is huge’


He got his start as a voice for the disenfranchised as a Capitol Hill intern for the late Sen. Hubert Hum- phrey of Minnesota. A lifetime later, Paul Benz is an ELCA pastor and the advocacy director for the Faith Action Network in Seattle, one of 16 ELCA advocacy offices.


Benz collars politicians in marbled


halls, urging them against cuts in housing and health care. He hosts advocacy days at lawmakers’ offices where legions echo his call. He’s at the pulpit urging letter campaigns. He recently advocated for start- up monies to fund the new National Housing Trust Fund and the Supple- mental Nutrition Assistance Program. Benz continues to beat the drum for involvement. “It’s about how we perceive our faith and our com- mitment to the gospel, and the work God calls us to do,” he said. “Because the chasm between pov- erty and wealth is huge.”


New life on a floodplain In 2008 monstrous rising waters from the Cedar River took no lives but destroyed 90 homes in Waverly, Iowa. Rebuilding was forbidden, and residents of this close-knit city won- dered if the land could be anything other than a useless moonscape. Mark A. Anderson, an assistant to the bishop of the Northeastern Iowa Synod, proposed a garden to provide Waverly’s most unfortunate with fresh produce.


Soon a partnership formed that included the city, Wartburg College students, extension-service experts and truck farmers. Last year yellow squash, corn and beans sprang up at the Waverly Sharing Garden. “Everybody has pitched in and done such a great job,” said Tab Ray, Waverly’s director of leisure services. Today at meal sites seniors and struggling families find nutritious, organic vegetables on their plates. Plots for individuals and an orchard will soon be added.


“This is Iowa, and this is how we do things here,” Anderson said.


‘I pray for them all the time’ Being homeless is hard enough. Being young, homeless and gay is much harder.


Since 2010 providing a safe place for homeless youth ages 13 to 21 has been the work of Montrose Grace Place, a ministry of Grace Lutheran Church, Houston. The church is in the city’s Montrose neighborhood, a magnet for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Each Thursday evening as many as 25 homeless youth come to Grace Place, where a dinner of macaroni and cheese or fried chicken is wait- ing. Wary at first, the visitors don’t say much. With time, trust builds. Some of the young people have aged out of the foster system and have been rejected by family. They


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• ELCA congregations are the most grassroots way to help. Visit www. elca.org and click on “Find a Congre- gation” at the top.


s it time for you to join the fight against poverty at home? Here are some resources:


• The ELCA’s 65 synods have initia- tives addressing poverty (www.elca. org/synods), as do the nine regions (www.elca.org/regions).


• The ELCA will distribute $866,550 in domestic-hunger grants to congre-


gations and other groups in 2012. The efforts on these pages received ELCA support. To find out if your initiative might qualify in 2013, visit www. elca.org/domestichungergrants.


• If meeting the needs of immigrants is compelling, visit www.elca.org/ immigration.


• To help Americans coping after a disaster, visit Lutheran Disaster


• To find a nearby ELCA advocacy office, visit www.elca.org/advocacy.


Response (www.ldr.org/volunteer).


• Lutheran Services in America (www.lutheranservices.org) assists 6 million people a year.


• Bread for the World (www.bread. org) helps globally and at home.


• Wheat Ridge Ministries (www. wheatridge.org) helps launch Lutheran human-care initiatives.


• Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (www.thrivent.com) supports a wide range of domestic poverty initiatives.


are couch-surfing, sleeping in parks or forced into sex by predatory adults in exchange for shelter. “They don’t have families through this period from childhood to adulthood,” said Lura Groen, pastor of Grace. An art project, board games or karaoke comes next. Then talk with peers. The evening ends with the


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• To share prayer for relief of poverty, click on www.elca.org/prayer.


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