House Of Mercy
As founder of the Adventure Center my wife and I foundered the House of Mercy in Texas as an emergency shelter.
In Dec of 2016 we began the adventure of procuring an old nursing home facility and turning it into a shelter.
During the Covid the shelter was able to implement specific rules of occupancy and was able to stay open during this difficult time
Today it runs close to peak capacity
My wife and I Pastored in a little town in Texas and during our time there we established a community food Pantry.
We fed an average of 10-15 thousand pounds of food per month to needy families in the area.
During that time the poverty level among children was approx. 35%.
We would have special events giving away food, having the Local Kiwanis club bringing their mobile eye glass unit and helping children with new eyeglasses, having home health there to do diabetes checks, glaucoma testing, blood pressure checks, and BBQ meals all FREE.
In the 90's we were pastoring a church in Grand Prairie, Tx where we were working through our church to feed the needy of the Dallas area. We averaged somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people that we fed each month. At times we had an excess of certain items that were donated so we set up a network of all the ministries in the Dallas area where we shared that came in, in excess. It was during this time that a toranado hit the town of Jerrell, Tx. “This tornado blew some houses completely off the foundations and swept away the disintegrated remains. It also scoured asphalt from roads, killed and dismembered hundreds of cattle, stripped bark from trees and uprooted them, and bounced vehicles for up to half a mile from their parking places.” It also left a grim toll, including 27 lives lost.
Within hours of receiving the news we had a team with all the food from different ministries of the area heading to Jerrell to help out. We were the first ministry to arrive to help out, arriving the dya of the tornado. We were able to set up in the School Gym and distribute food and clothing. It was approxamately 24hrs before the Salvation Army, Red Cross and others were able to get there. We were glad to have been able to respong so quickly.