Lately, every week seems to be a bad news/good news story. There are more people seeking assistance than ever before, people who need more help than most congregations can provide. The good news is that your support allows us to help more people than ever before.

• In the past year the Long Island Council of Churches has fed hundreds of people each week in Nassau and Suffolk. In addition, we distributed 563 Thanksgiving baskets, fed 575 people at our Annual Thanksgiving Dinner in Riverhead, and distributed 360 Christmas baskets. We continue to need donations of non-perishable food and would love to have more volunteer drivers.
  
  
• Our Multi-Faith Forum presented its 230th Building Bridges program, a project without parallel anywhere. We still need more volunteers for the MFF, particularly Christians who are willing to tell how they practice their faith in their daily lives.
  
  
• Thanks to the generous support of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, we took over the staffing of MICAH, the Mobilized Interfaith Coalition Against Hunger, and hired Neelofer Chaudry as our first-ever Advocacy Director. MICAH is bringing together local congregations and other faith-based organizations to address the causes of hunger in our midst, focusing on rescuing food for hunger ministries, making changes in local housing policies, and addressing our national and local health coverage crises.
  
  
• We offered seminars in congregations and community groups on how to be good stewards of our money, avoid predatory loans, and cope with the recession. Our financial experts have tackled such unusual requests as a bilingual seminar for Catholics in Hempstead, a presentation to confirmands in Wantagh, and another for clergy in Melville on how to manage your congregation’s money. Perhaps you would like us to do a seminar in your congregation?
  
  
• We have helped launch the new Interfaith Clergy Committee of Long Island, seminars on how to pay for energy conservation (in conjunction with the Long Island Interfaith Environment Network, which we helped create), a program in Riverhead for the newly unemployed in conjunction with Episcopal Charities of Long Island, Grace Episcopal Church, and FEGS, the Jewish health and social service agency.
  
  
• None of this would be possible without the support of many people like you. Thanks!

The Rev. Thomas W. Goodhue
Executive Director
Long Island Council of Churches