10-01-08

LET THE PEACE OF GOD RULE IN YOUR HEARTS (Col 3:15)

God bless you dear brothers and sisters. Please be calmed and know that we have entered into a prophesied time of relatively short duration, but of great personal stress; a time portrayed in the Bible as the Great Tribulation (Isa 3:1-12; Dan 12:6-13; Rev 6:9-11; 7:9-17), and that this Tribulation is ordained by God for the trying (testing and purifying) of our souls. We are being prepared to meet our Maker. Hallelujah!

(Dan 12:10)  Many shall be purified [Heb: made bright, cleansed, polished, purged], and made white [“the righteousness of the saints” Rev 19:8], and tried [Heb: to fuse (metal), refined: melted, purified]; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.

May I speak with you as a close and most dear friend? Thank you. Yes indeed, isn’t this wonderful? J  I feel I have been waiting for this “day” all my life, and frankly, I am truly inwardly excited beyond measure or common description. My heart is a-swirl in loving tension and looks up, yearning, longing for the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed hope, His imminent return, and somehow… I am held quite caught, softly but firmly in His hand, suspended in-between, enraptured half-way home, between billowing white clouds above and the dark hard ground below, gazing up at dawning brightness, breathless glow, the warmth of His coming, love descending, slowly encompassing, embracing - me, and looking down at the harsh cold darkness, ruthless turmoil, raging flames, confusion, misery, disorder, twisting coils of seething hate, unspeakable havoc yet to come; these things that I see, both now and then are, twitching death throes, final stages of Satan’s ignoble reign, this withering wanton world.

Praise God! Thank you Lord. Yes indeed, the end of our day to day vexation with the wicked unrighteous, like “just Lot” (2 Pet 2:7), the end that we have been patiently waiting for is nigh at hand, but what then shall we do? Dear friends, please observe this command issued by our Lord Jesus Christ: “Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15).

Dear brothers and sisters, that you may be blessed, please allow me to refresh your memory and reintroduce you to our Rescue Mission through the following brief background sketch. The Suncoast Haven Of Rest Rescue Mission was established twenty years ago in 1988 at our present location of 5625 Park Blvd in Pinellas Park, Florida as a 501©(3) nonprofit corporation, and we continue to serve all of Pinellas County from this central location. Our small campus serves the public as a food pantry, a soup kitchen, a Day Center, a rehabilitation center, a School of Evangelism, and an evangelical church. We subsist entirely upon the freewill donations of gracious donors, and receive no federal, state, or local government subsidies whatsoever. Indeed, we give away everything that we receive from our wonderful donors to many thousands of desperately needy people every month. Consequently, we are most often broke, but thanks to the Lord, we do manage to honor and pay our bills. J

The doors to our Rescue Mission are always open seven days a week to the poor and needy. Our basic staff consists of eight formerly homeless men and women who have officially entered into our drug and alcohol free Ministerial Volunteer In Training program for rehabilitation (tearing down the old) and ministerial training (building up the new), and we also receive working assistance from warm-hearted Christian men and women volunteers, and hundreds of Community Service workers. Together, with compassion, sincerity, and the loving understanding of God, we provide free boxes of groceries, donated clothing, and used toys to 7,957 (seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven) currently domiciled but impoverished families of men, women, and little children throughout Pinellas County. Altogether, with the indispensable aid of our two trucks and crews, we are collecting and distributing an average of 43,588 pounds of free food (22 tons) per month, or 29,058 meals and meal equivalencies per month to the poor residents and homeless citizens of this County. Additionally, there are 148 (one hundred forty eight) other needy non-profit organizations in Pinellas County who receive bulk foods from our Rescue Mission, such as Retarded and Crippled Children organizations, Veteran’s Clubs, churches, retirement homes, hospices, Deaf persons Homes, various ministries, etc., etc.

In December of 2007, we initiated a new meal program in Pinellas County wherein we helped the working poor by purchasing, preparing, and delivering bag lunch meals to 11 day-labor businesses and Pinellas Hope (tent city) between 5:00am and 6:00am each workday morning. With the gracious help of two churches, our Rescue Mission prepared and delivered over 4,000 bag lunch meals each month, or approximately 32,000 meals during the duration of this excellent program to many needy and very grateful recipients through July of 2008 when we had to partially discontinue this program for lack of funds. For many of these hungry recipients attempting to obtain work to support themselves and their families who did not get called out on day-labor jobs due to our declining economy, that lonely bag lunch was their only meal of the day.

Our open Day Center serves thousands of impoverished domiciled families who are hovering, in fact quivering, on the sharp edge of homelessness. The following in-Mission services are made available for free: daily clean clothing, hot showers, hot meals, food boxes, telephone, mailing address for employment and inter-family contact purposes, Christian Counseling, Share program, Crisis Intervention, food stamp applications and guidance, telephone voice mail boxes, Medicaid, four Christian based 12 Step AA/NA Recovery classes per week, G.E.D. applications, free medical help, thirty daily half-hour evangelical gospel messages hosted by thirty different born-again guest speakers per month, free non-prescription reading glasses, legal advice from a Public Defender’s Office attorney, Internet job searches, job counseling and placement, bus passes, temporary cash assistance, Sunday church service, and social security information. Busy, busy, busy.

As evangelical Christians whose Rescue Mission Statement of Purpose is to win lost souls to Christ, we also participate in several Christ-centered outreach programs. Three of our Rescue Mission Board of Directors members, including myself, are Sheriff’s Department volunteer Chaplains and teach and preach the evangelical Word of God in various time slots to 4,000 inmates in the Pinellas County Jail. We also minister the evangelical Word of God and give out biblical tracts and free Bibles from two booths at the Wagon Wheel Flea Market which hosts about 10,000 people per week, and we purchase, cook, deliver, and serve hot meals to several hundred residents of Pinellas Hope (tent city) and thereafter minister the Word of God to those residents every week. This year, three of our Board of Directors members, excluding myself, have planted two new churches in Pinellas County, one inside the Pinellas County Jail, and one on Clearwater Beach.

In addition to yearly providing approximately 350,000 meals and meal equivalencies to the poor residents of Pinellas County, and providing the previously mentioned crucial daily social service programs to thousands of families and homeless persons, and providing three excellent biblical outreach programs to the community, and planting two viable and growing churches, we also hold half-hour early evening Bible study classes every day of the week that are hosted by different guest pastors, lay pastors, and born-again evangelicals, and we hold church service here on Sunday mornings delivered through Church Inside The Tabernacle which I pastor. All of these evangelical messages are broadcast live streaming video on our two websites: www.havenofrest.com which garners over 100,000 (one hundred thousand) hits per year, and www.tabernacleofmoses.org which garners over 1,600,000 (one million six hundred thousand) verifiable hits per year. The oral church services accompanied by typewritten notes, plus several books have been archived on the latter site for the last five years. These two websites are instrumental (a blessing from God) in spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation in the world.

Without exaggeration, it is safe to say that during the twenty years of our existence, the Suncoast Haven Of Rest Rescue Mission has provided several million meals to needy men, women, and little children, and led thousands of souls to the Lord, and we need your cooperation and help if we are to continue to witness the gospel of Jesus Christ and obediently feed His sheep the spiritual food and the physical food that they so desperately need. We need your loving support, your prayers and financial help. “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Pet 5:7), we need to trust God and wrest our eyes off ourselves, which is an inward self-centered focus of self love, and give our attention and affections to other hurting people who are hungry and spiritually needy, which is an outward God-centered focus of sacrificial love. God loves obedient sacrifice, for obedient sacrifice is true love. Yes times are tough, and it is in these tough times that God’s people should come together hand-in-hand joyfully worshiping God and looking upward. What better way could there possibly be to honor the living God of love than by obeying His only begotten son Jesus Christ who is eternally commanding us to “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17).

Sincerely,

Rev. Lionel Cabral

Ps. We also need Bibles. Thank you. God bless you