To date GRACE’s Mobile Food Pantry has supplied 513 at-risk households and 2,406 family members with over $23,500 worth of produce and kitchen staples this summer! The Mobile Food Pantry ensures perishable food donated at the end of the week can be enjoyed over the weekend at their peak of freshness. Each Friday during the summer, 10-20 volunteers unload a truck filled with produce and kitchen staples to be given to families in neighborhoods where residents were most vulnerable to food insecurity. In a similar fashion to the Food Pantry, GRACE Grocery Giveaway maintains the dignity of each family member by allowing them to choose the food that works best with their family’s dietary needs and preferences. The tables are set up like a farmer’s market, stocked with impressive items such as yams, cabbage, walnuts, cranberries and oranges. Families would not be able to walk away with healthy grocery items

Make a donut run this Saturday morning, and then stop by our resale stores for tax-free savings! Many shoppers take advantage of the Sales Tax Holiday, which runs Friday, August 5, through Sunday, August 7. Shoppers can get tax exemption for most clothing, footwear, school supplies and backpacks priced under $100. This means parents can save about $8 for every $100 spent. Both GRACEful Buys locations are celebrating with a 25% off sale on all children’s clothing through August 7. In addition to the sale, Style & GRACE boutique is hosting a 60% off sale on all home décor items. It may seem too good to be true that a great find at GRACEful Buys or Style & GRACE translates to warm meals, life-changing medical care, education and hope for the future. But it really is that simple. The next time you have an hour in your schedule, take your family

Participating in the Friends & Family program, which provides assistance and companionship to displaced or immobile seniors, is a much-needed avenue to extend your heart to a senior in need of affection. We’d like to share two options that you can tailor with your time and talents to show love to seniors in a meaningful way. Deliver Monthly Commodities Volunteers provide commodities to neighboring seniors once a month. The volunteers meet at the Food Pantry in the morning to pick up kitchen staples, toiletries, small gifts and pertinent information to share with the seniors. The route from start to finish typically lasts an hour and a half. Those unable to commit to monthly deliveries can also sign up to become substitutes if there is a shortage or special need.  The next commodities date is August 17. Contact Friends & Family Coordinator Maryann Waddell if you’d like to help. Provide Companionship

GRACE is grateful for another year of support from EY as one of our elite feature sponsors for the GRACE Gala. Ernst & Young Global Limited (known as EY) is known as one of the “big four” audit firms and is the third largest professional services firm in the world. In recent years, EY was ranked number one for “Best Accounting Firm to Work For” by Forbes Magazine and has been ranked one of the top ten companies for working mothers for nearly a decade. As the official band sponsor for the GRACE Gala, we are excited to welcome Mars Hill Band. Mars Hill has quickly gained an audience in the DFW corporate performer market with their unique blend of classic and current music. Mars Hill has performed for top names such as Clear Channel, JC Penny, Whataburger, Salvation Army and Juvenille Diabetes Foundation, just to name a few. Guests can expect

If there’s anything better than being surrounded by your family at the table, it’s surrounding homemade buttermilk biscuits and all the fixins’ of an abundant weekend breakfast. A grateful mother and GRACE client sent us photos of four dishes and multiple meals her family was able to enjoy together thanks to your donations at the Food Pantry. Step into her kitchen for a menu of what this family was able to utilize with your generous support: This mother was nearly brought to tears when she spotted bulgur and quinoa grains at the Food Pantry, which allowed her to make tabouli, a family-favorite Persian staple that yielded multiple meals for her family throughout the week. Stories like this emphasis the importance of a self-select Food Pantry, which allows families to hand-pick groceries based each family’s dietary and cultural needs. When you are struggling through a difficult season, the comfort of familiar meal

GRACE has been incredibly fortunate this year to receive overwhelming Back to School support from local churches and groups! The most pressing need in our current Clothing Room inventory is new and gently-used shoes for elementary-aged children. As all parents know, children practically live in their sneakers, and shoes are an essential apparel item that a student can utilize most of the year. Here are some ideas to meet the needs of our children for the schoolyear: WALK IN THEIR SHOES The new schoolyear is a great learning opportunity to talk to your children about their peers whose families might be struggling to make ends meet. If you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes for your children, consider purchasing an extra pair that could go to another child who is the same age. While you’re scouting out the latest sales, please be watchful of shoe sales, since this is

Living Magazine readers were given the chance to recognize local businesses that brought out the best in the community, and we are honored to have been selected for the “Best of” in 2016 for Best Resale Shop! GRACEful Buys Euless has already made a splash since its Grand Opening last October, with some of the best-kept secrets for furniture deals, clothing items and more. Customers at both locations are so happy with their purchase, that customers are often eager to share their DIY transformations proudly displayed in their homes. Take a look at Lisa’s $15 find at GRACEful Buys in Grapevine. Some sanding, filler, and primer restored this dull cabinet into a high-end credenza. Before & After As excited as we get to receive accolades and comments from happy customers who have discovered our stores, we are ever grateful to the community for their patronage to our shops and generosity

GRACE is proud to partner with Gateway Church for Feed Our Kids! Congregants from various campuses in different cities gathered at the Outreach Center, GRACE’s most populated Feed Our Kids site, to show God’s love in the way of hot dogs, pizza and hamburgers. Everyone likes a good hot dog now and again, but these weren’t your run-of-the-mill lunches. Gateway went all out and served gourmet-style hot dogs that spanned a foot long, complete with fresh-baked artisan buns from Fuddruckers. Other meals included New York Style pizza and prime beef patty burgers on scratch-made sesame buns. Amazing, still, is that the team managed to serve over 1,000 of these meals this week! The Outreach Center has reached record-breaking needs, serving as many as 300 meals in one day. Kam Hunt, a Local Outreach Pastor at Gateway Church, managed logistics with food, supplies, volunteers and (of course) the lunch music playlist. Hunt talked

A visit to the First United Methodist Church’s gym last week might have given you the impression that its members were preparing a picnic for the entire city. Dozens of congregations gathered to assemble sack lunches, pen encouraging notes and ready the crafting supplies for another week of Feed Our Kids, GRACE’s summer lunch program. “Serving lunches at all six sites for the entire week is no easy task,” says GRACE Seasonal Programs Coordinator Lori Stevens, “the members of First United Methodist Church in Grapevine takes on this logistical feat with joy and zeal. It’s nothing short of amazing.” At week’s end, the group served lunches to 3,244 children. To give you perspective on that amount, you could line a sack lunch from end to end and make your way around the entire Grapevine High School track. Twice. A special thanks to the First United Methodist Church in Grapevine for

As the only Community Clinic in the immediate area GRACE is committed to providing holistic, preventative care that helps families overcome financial and physical hardship. Your investment in GRACE programs spurs exciting changes for families in our community, including the 835 individuals who consider the GRACE Community Clinic their medical home. FAMILIES ARE MAKING NOTICEABLE CHANGES Thanks to our partnership with the Grapevine REC and the H.E.R.O (Helping Everyone Enjoy Recreational Opportunities) program, clients who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate due to financial hardship are making tangible progress. Patients are challenged to reach a benchmark of a 10% health progress rate each quarter. Nearly three-fourths of our diabetes patients were able to decrease their hemoglobin A1C levels and reach their goal. More than half also increased their blood pressure to the target range, and nearly half decreased their BMI by at least 10%. LIVES ARE BEING CHANGED The Community Clinic was