The Downtown Rescue Mission is a nonprofit organization serving the homeless living throughout northern Alabama and southern Tennessee. For more than 30 years, we have saved numerous lives and have had a profound impact on thousands of others by providing Christ-filled, enriched and compassionate services to those in desperate need.
From the President/CEO: Home Away From Home
As I look to the new year with great anticipation, I need to take a few moments to reflect on how God has done so many wonderful things at the Downtown Rescue Mission in 2011. Many times with my visionary personality and always planning for the future I find that I forget to look back and thank God for His awesome miracles.
As I write this article we have just come through the Thanksgiving holiday season where the Mission gave out over 800 Thanksgiving food boxes with frozen turkeys to needy families from our community. We also fed over 1,200 meals to homeless men, women and children at our Great Thanksgiving Banquet. That week more than 40 hands were raised to receive Christ as their Savior! Praise God!
This past year the Mission held a few brand new events that were very successful. We had our first 5K “Run to Rescue” where over 200 runners competed and helped raise donations. We had a Veteran’s Day celebration to honor homeless vets and staff members who willingly served and protected our country. There was not a dry eye as the men and women marched in line and then received their honorary dog tags. We were also able to share the gospel of Jesus to many others at our regular yearly community events like the Independence Day picnic, Fall Festival/Trunk-r-Treat and the Children’s Christmas Party.
This past year we opened our 6th thrift store in Madison, AL. Each store is a great resource for each of their communities by providing good quality used items at great prices. At the same time the stores’ revenues are used to help operate the ministry and programs of DRM. One of the special things about our stores is that you can see Christ’s love flowing through the employees as they pray with and for their customers as they share about their Savior! Something you won’t find at most other stores.
The last few years have been financially hard for many people and we have seen evidence of that with how many more folks are coming to us looking for help. In 2011, DRM will serve over 220,000 meals which is a record. We will give out an average of 235 food boxes per month compared to 120 just two years ago. Our beds will be slept in over 70,000 times and we are averaging more mothers and children in our program than ever before. I thank God that He has given our community a ministry like DRM to help those in need. But I thank Him even more because we have a community that supports us by volunteering, donating and praying for us. Thank You! And Thank God!
Keith Overholt, MBA
President/CEO
