Our TRM party to celebrate being named the Best Workplace in Pierce County is set for May 5th at 4pm, New Life Sq.  There will be food, fun and prizes so make sure you put it on your schedule to stop by to celebrate and encourage the team.  We all can take pride in this award that we share together.  See you on the 5th.DC 

I got a great email from John Farmer in the Challenge Learning Services letting me know that Robert Lee, a recent graduate of the New Life Program has been doing great in his training to get a CDL and become a Professional Truck Driver.  This is a great thing and we should give Robert a big pat on the back next time we see him at the Mission.  Robert was always singing and praise the Lord while he was with us in the NLP and now he’ll be doing it on the open road.DC 

We are thrilled to announce the $1 Million gift from the Gary Milgard Family Foundation towards Adams Sq.  This is such a great boost to our Capital Campaign and puts our committed total to $4 Million.  We are so grateful to the Milgards, they have consistently been supportive and this is just another way they have blessed others and provided much needed support to Homeless children and families.  Special thanks to Mar Corpuz and Lynette Grubbs for all their work in the application process.  They do a great job and we are blessed to have them both.  Praise the Lord for His goodness and provision.  DC 

A group of the TRM team attended the Business Examiner Best Workplace awards banquet last night and came away with the top award as the best non-profit workplace in Pierce County.  This award, and our national recognition as a Best Christian Workplace, is something that everyone can be proud of.  Together we have built a place that is challenging, loving, and encouraging.  Those of you who attended our last quarterly staff meeting will remember that we are making “encouraging others” our daily goal at TRM.  Let’s keep it up.  We are making a difference.  Later today we will be announcing a party for all of us to celebrate this great award.  Congratulations to everyone on the TRM team.  DC 

Brian Kristjansson, Deputy State Director for Senator Patty Murray stopped by TRM today to talk about their support for Adams Sq. Family Center.  Senator Murray is supporting the project and looking for ways to lend her influence to helping make sure the project is successful.  TRM has applied for a capital appropriation in this years budget but we have no way of knowing how that might turn out.  TRM has never had any support from the federal appropriations budget to my knowledge but we are certainly willing to try to see what can be done.  With Senator Murray’s support, she is the chairwoman of the Transportation and Housing sub-committee,  it might get done.  Keep it in your prayers.  DC

Item 1:  A bunch of folks have seen the newspaper last week refer to my stepping down from the Tacoma Public Utility Board and asked “What’s Up?”.   As the article stated, I am stepping down to focus on raising the funds for Adams Square Family Center.  It has been a great pleasure to serve on on the Utility Board for the past four years and they have always been great supporters of the Mission, but our Adams Sq. Capital Campaign requires my undevoted attention for the moment so I decided to step down.  Item 2:  Meeting this week with some key business leaders including Bill Phillip, Founder of Colombia Bank and John Barline.  We continue to look for partners in the community to help us advocate and support for the Adams Sq. project.  Item 3:  Political folks are also on the agenda for this week as staff from Patty Murray’s office come by TRM to talk about potential federal support in the budget for Adams Sq.  Keep these things in mind and in prayer as we move through our week.  Item 4:  I would like to encourage everyone to do everything this week in a spirit of service and humility.  We are honored to serve the poor and must remain in a spirit of humility and thankfulness to God for allowing us the chance to be in His service.DC 

Congratulations are in order for James Leet, our Tyler Square youth coordinator and Katy Lafferty, our Family Shelter Youth Coordinator.  They became engaged to be married last week!  We are all so excited to see these two great people start a life together.  They met a couple years ago here at TRM and have been a great team serving the youth of Pierce County.  Now they will be a great family.  I’ll let you know when there is a date for the wedding.  Make sure you congratulate James and Katy.  We love you both.DC 

Thanks to all the GREAT people at Harbor Christian Church for inviting me to come to their church at Penninsula High School on Sunday morning.  They were kind enough to give the Mission a check for $1000 to help the poor.  I had the chance to give some idea of all the great things that are happening at the Mission and to meet folks after the services.  Any of the HCC family who are interested in volunteering, please feel free to call 383-4462 and talk with Tom.  Staff should always be prepared to help volunteers get plugged into TRM and be part of serving.  A special thanks to Pastors Gino Grunberg and Rick Enloe for their warm welcome.  Visit HCCtoday.com to see what its all about in the harbor.dc 

Our hours of operation for those wishing to drop off goods at the Donation Center are the following:  Monday-Wednesday 11am-1pm and 3pm-5pm.  Food and Financial donations are welcome anytime.  Some people ask me the reasoning behind limiting the hours available to drop off in-kind goods.  The issues are economic and operational in nature.  It cost us resources and staff to keep the donation center functioning at an efficient level so that we are best using the items that we receive.  At this point we are only able to justify one full-time staff person to make it all happen.  That means that our manager Rod has to take in the donations, manage the stock, schedule and arrange for pickups and drive the truck.  This takes time and so we limited the hours that others could drop off their goods.  We have also had some issues with a select few citizens dropping off items that were not suitable to be used by the Mission or anyone else, thus making us the party that had to pay to haul off the unusable items.  Our goal is simple, make the best and most effective use of the items that are donated.  I encourage all our donors to check our website for the list of things that we desperately need and use that as your giving guide.  Our board is looking at retail options such as a thrift store which may help generate revenue and help off-set the expense of the donation ministry.DC 

Thanks to all the staff who attended our Quarterly Staff Meeting.  For those that weren’t able to make it, we looked at some survey results from our recent Best Workplace Award to determine where we are doing great and where we can stand to grow a bit.  The long and the short of it is this…nearly 70% of our team absolutely love what they do and who they work with, another 20 percent are neutral.  There is just over 10% that is not engaged at all.  The upshot of the results are that we can be an even better place to work if we keep encouraging and loving each other, and bring our very best to work each day.  The detail results are available for people who love details…and there are pages and pages of details.  Those of you who attended, let me know what you think…positive or otherwise.dc