Hope Chest Needs to Expand!
If you have ever been in our “Hope Chest” Thrift Store, you KNOW the need. It has been a huge success since opening in June 2016 and the outpouring of donated goods from the community has been unbelievable! We are able to help and bless SO MANY people with the donations, plus proceeds from the store go to help fund a local charity, New Hope Counseling Center.
We are being SO blessed by the people of this community, who have made the Hope Chest so successful as a ministry TO the community. It really is a ministry OF the community! We are just stewards of what the community is blessing.
Our biggest challenge is taking all of the blessings of what people give, and not being able to make ALL of those donations available to our own community, because we don’t have enough room to set everything out. We are so thankful for C.R.O.S.S. Ministries in Osceola, who helped us open our Thrift Store and who have picked up a truck load of our excess every single week since we opened 2 ½ years ago! And our store room/sorting room is still FULL at all times, floor to ceiling! Donations continue to be poured out…our blessings are overflowing…
Most of the people who come into the Hope Chest tell us: You need to expand! You need more room! You need another building! People want to donate furniture…People want to buy furniture…But we have no room for it… So, yes, there is definitely a need to expand.
New Hope’s Board of Directors has discussed this need several times, and have thought something like a Morton building would be good, but had no prospects. Hope Chest Co-Manager, Holly Oden, has also said that a Morton building would be ideal. Well…someone walked into the store recently and told us about a possibility. The metal building just to the North of the Hope Chest is for sale. This seems too perfect to be a coincidence.
If the Hope Chest were able to expand into this second building, the current store could be all Clothing and the new building could hold household goods, miscellaneous items, AND FURNITURE! It could also house the Hope Loan Closet, which loans medical equipment to anyone who needs it. New Hope was asked to take over this valued community service in 2013 (it had been in Appanoose County since 1949). It is currently located at New Hope Counseling Center, but there too, in a limited amount of space. We consistently have loaned out around 100 items at all times. People are so thankful for this service and we are so happy to provide it! Having it at a more accessible location would also improve this wonderful community service.
So we are reaching out to our New Hope family and the community to present this need and how it could be filled for the Hope Chest to be an even greater blessing to our community and to New Hope with increased income. If you would like to help in any way, call New Hope at: 641-856-3326. Or donations can be sent to: NHCC, PO Box 151, Centerville, IA 52544.
So much more than just a Store…
It’s a place of refuge and healing for the people
and families of our communities.
Facebook: The Hope Chest Thrift Store