Stories
Meet Our Summer Missionaries – Darcie
Over the next few months, we will highlight a new summer missionary each week here on our website.
Our summer missionaries are high-school to college aged students who spend their summer volunteering full-time with us. While they are here, they fill many needed roles around the Mission.
Our summer missionaries listen and pray with people in our front room, organize and distribute food in our food pantry, serve in our clothing store, carport, and furniture area, participate in summer programs with children and youth, and join in with many of the Bible studies and congregations of Mission Arlington®. We are so thankful for their heart for the Lord and willingness to serve in this way.
Get to know Darcie:
Meet Our Summer Missionaries – Cesar
Over the next few months, we will highlight a new summer missionary each week here on our website.
Our summer missionaries are high-school to college aged students who spend their summer volunteering full-time with us. While they are here, they fill many needed roles around the Mission.
Our summer missionaries listen and pray with people in our front room, organize and distribute food in our food pantry, serve in our clothing store, carport, and furniture area, participate in summer programs with children and youth, and join in with many of the Bible studies and congregations of Mission Arlington®. We are so thankful for their heart for the Lord and willingness to serve in this way.
Get to know Cesar:
Meet Our Summer Missionaries – Darla
Over the next few months, we will highlight a new summer missionary each week here on our website.
Our summer missionaries are high-school to college aged students who spend their summer volunteering full-time with us. While they are here, they fill many needed roles around the Mission.
Our summer missionaries listen and pray with people in our front room, organize and distribute food in our food pantry, serve in our clothing store, carport, and furniture area, participate in summer programs with children and youth, and join in with many of the Bible studies and congregations of Mission Arlington®. We are so thankful for their heart for the Lord and willingness to serve in this way.
Get to know Darla:
Meet Our Summer Missionaries – Grant
Over the next few months, we will highlight a new summer missionary each week here on our website.
Our summer missionaries are high-school to college aged students who spend their summer volunteering full-time with us. While they are here, they fill many needed roles around the Mission.
Our summer missionaries listen and pray with people in our front room, organize and distribute food in our food pantry, serve in our clothing store, carport, and furniture area, participate in summer programs with children and youth, and join in with many of the Bible studies and congregations of Mission Arlington®. We are so thankful for their heart for the Lord and willingness to serve in this way.
Get to know Grant:
Charity Navigator awards 4-STARS
Charity Navigator is reported to be the “largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities in the United States.” This non-profit watchdog supports donors in making well-informed decisions about their charitable contributions by providing insights into a non-profit’s financial stability and its “adherence to best practices for both accountability and transparency.”
We are pleased to report that for the 15th year in a row, Charity Navigator has awarded Mission Arlington® with its coveted 4-STAR award, their highest designation. According to a congratulatory letter from Charity Navigator President and CEO, Michael Thatcher, Mission Arlington® / Mission Metroplex®
“exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in your area of work. Less than 1% of the charities we evaluate have received at least 15 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that Mission Arlington® / Mission Metroplex® outperforms most other charities in America.”
We are so honored by the privilege we have every day of serving in this great and generous community, and we never take your support for granted. Our administrative overhead continues to be a low 1.7 percent. We don’t sell anything you provide, and we never charge for our services. We stay open 364 days every year, closing only on Christmas Day, and this was true even in 2020, the most difficult of years for everyone.
You can discover more about the administration of the ministry here, and you can see for yourselves the ministry results which happen here, because of your daily support. You can stay up-to-date with the ministries happening here each week through our Facebook, Instagram reports, or our bi-monthly newsletters.
Please come to see us when you can!
Keeping warm when it’s cold!
Thank you for your continued support with items that help to keep people warm.
As historic, bitterly cold weather enveloped much of North Texas, the need to help people keep warm became evident. Our supply of coats, blankets, hats and gloves diminished quickly. We communicated the need through our Facebook page, and very quickly, people responded – as our community always does – with much needed items to keep people warm.
We are always amazed and grateful for the support of this community for other people in need. We are so grateful for your support, but the need remains great.
As power remains out across our community, we are continuing to respond to people’s needs as best we can. We know that we will get through this, as we always do, but we are so grateful that we get to do it together.
You are making a difference here, and we are so grateful for you!
Warmth for the Cold
As historic, bitterly cold weather enveloped much of North Texas, the need to help people keep warm became evident. Our supply of coats, blankets, hats and gloves diminished quickly. We communicated the need through our Facebook page, and very quickly, people responded – as our community always does – with much needed items to keep people warm. We are always amazed and grateful for the support of this community for other people in need. We are so grateful for your support, but the need remains great.
Thank you for your continued support with items that help to keep people warm.
As power remains out across our community, we are continuing to respond to people’s needs as best we can. We know that we will get through this, as we always do, but we are so grateful that we get to do it together.
You are making a difference here, and we are so grateful for you!
A Year to Remember
Some say that this was “a year to forget,” and we understand the sentiment. It has been a hard year on so many fronts. At the same time, we experienced many blessings that we won’t soon forget:
We grew to love our community more deeply.
As need increased across the year, often in staggering ways, you came in to “lift the load” day-after-day. Lines of cars packed with donations rolled through non-stop, from open to close. The joy you so enthusiastically expressed when you gave filled us up as surely as it did the overflowing bins which received your gifts. This remained true – even when many of you gave despite the negative impact of the virus on your own family. You can see how touched from the April 2020 Facebook post below:
“You drop by all day long, as if you don’t have a care in the world. You say you just picked up “a little something extra” from the store, but your trunk is filled with food for people in need, as if money grows on trees. You say something new came in, and you are letting us have “this old thing,” and you think we don’t notice that what you’ve given is brand new. You never need anyone to know your name, and the moms and dads you’ve helped probably never will. We only see, but God knows, and we pray that you will be as richly blessed as you have blessed others. We are humbled and inspired by you, and so grateful to walk the journey with you in these days. Thank you for making a difference here.”
We grew personally and spiritually.
Adjustments happened as “social distancing” became the order of the day. We wore masks & gloves, took temperatures, and created protected, outdoor spaces to keep everyone safe. Along the way, we grew closer to each other, to people in need, and to you. We were extraordinarily blessed even on the longest of days. With Tillie’s leadership, we kept our sense of humor and found ways to smile as we served together. As the Pandemic worsened, affecting the health of people we knew, and simultaneously affecting the economic foundation of so many people’s lives, we knelt to pray more often than we had before. In this most personal of relationships, we found strength for our journey – for these days, of course, but also for the days ahead. We are grateful.
We saw increased ministry effectiveness.
Since we couldn’t gather in large groups, we had the opportunity to rethink, and to re-create some of our traditional ministry offerings. Our health clinics, for example, adjusted to serving people differently, so that everyone could socially distance and stay safe, yet still receive treatment. Since we couldn’t gather for our annual Easter egg hunt, we put the eggs together with food baskets and made home deliveries to more children than ever before. For our Fall Festival and Thanksgiving Day ministries, we moved everything outside, and found those who gave and those who received liked it better. In December, we were able to create a space for a second, fully operating Christmas Store, operating in parallel to each other. The second store provided for better distancing and decreased the wait time of each guest. We can see keeping many of the changes made this year many years into the future. We are thankful too that – by God’s Grace – we were able to keep our doors open every day of 2020.
We are grateful for you!
With the apostle Paul, we “thank God every time we remember you,” (Philippians 1:8), and we never want to forget what He has done in and through us this past year. We are grateful for you. We know that there is still a long road ahead. We are so grateful we get to walk it with you.
Young Hearts that Give
Ordinary People Making Extraordinary Differences
Everyone knows that the need is great in our day, because of COVID-19’s affect on our economy, and a variety of other factors. At the same time, we are seeing generosity from people in extraordinary and beautiful ways. Day after day, people give what they have to make a difference here, and it is impacting the lives of ordinary people experiencing a moment of need.
A Special Birthday Party
Instead of receiving birthday presents on her 13th birthday, Natalie hosted a birthday parade, asking people to collect canned food for people in need. Natalie stood on her front lawn as car after car drove by, honking, waving, and dropping off the food. Natalie and her family brought the food to Mission Arlington® yesterday, and presented it to Ms. Tillie.
We are Grateful for You
What an extraordinary young person. What a beautiful community. Thank you for the way each of you give, so that another life will be ok. We are grateful for you.
More Illustrations of our Generous Community
Tillie Burgin, our Executive Director, often says, “God gives. You give, and we give it away.” Want to see more examples? Click the following links:
Generous Gifts from Young Hearts
Ordinary People Making Extraordinary Differences
Everyone knows that the need is great in our day, because of COVID-19’s affect on our economy, and a variety of other factors. At the same time, we are seeing generosity from people in extraordinary and beautiful ways. Day after day, people give what they have to make a difference here, and it is impacting the lives of ordinary people experiencing a moment of need.
A Special Birthday Party
Instead of receiving birthday presents on her 13th birthday, Natalie hosted a birthday parade, asking people to collect canned food for people in need. Natalie stood on her front lawn as car after car drove by, honking, waving, and dropping off the food. Natalie and her family brought the food to Mission Arlington® yesterday, and presented it to Ms. Tillie.
We are Grateful for You
What an extraordinary young person. What a beautiful community. Thank you for the way each of you give, so that another life will be ok. We are grateful for you.
More Illustrations of our Generous Community
Tillie Burgin, our Executive Director, often says, “God gives. You give, and we give it away.” Want to see more examples? Click the following links:
