Family Promise Mat-Su receives free facility for long-awaited community resource center

WASILLA — Family Promise Mat-Su recently achieved a massive milestone thanks to an unexpected donation from the Pioneer Christian Fellowship, who’s closing its congregation and donating its church building to the local nonprofit organization.

This gives Family Promise staff and volunteers the chance to officially launch their long-awaited dream, the H.O.P.E. Navigation Center, long before they ever would have anticipated.

“I was in the middle of advertising that this is our dream. This is what we hope to build someday… They listened to our dream of what we wanted to provide at this navigation center,” Family Promise Mat-Su Executive Director, Ginger Bear said. “Their words were, ‘we’re blessed to give this to Family Promise to further the mission of our church, and I said, we are blessed as Family Promise to accept,’ and we were all in tears.”

H.O.P.E is an acronym for Housing, Outreach, Education, Programs, and Education.

According to Bear, H.O.P.E. will be a community resource center that will offer a variety of services to individuals and families across various levels of need. She said they will offer programs such as child care, computer use for job readiness, evening meals for the homeless, indoor play space during cold weather, and apartment space for disaster relief survivors.

“This is huge. I’m beyond words… I used to say, ‘go-God-go.’ That’s one of my favorite sayings. I made up a new word. You know what a tornado is. It’s a God-Nado’ and family promises socks are just whirling,” Bear said with a laugh.

Family Promise team members will begin moving donated items they’ve been collecting for this huge project Saturday, Nov. 20. Bear said they’ve acquired a variety of items through the community, including a large amount of furniture from the Fellowship.

“We have been gifted everything we need. It’s so exciting,” Bear said.

Operating out of a full a full-fledged facility brimming with resources will help Family Promise add new opportunities and expand on existing efforts.

According to Bear, they’re eager to get going and the plan is to launch H.O.P.E. services immediately, hoping to get a majority of their programs up and running by December. She said they’re also planning to hold a public ribbon-cutting in the summer of 2020. She said there’s an incredible amount of possibility for positive impacts for years to come from this ongoing and ever-evolving project.

“The sky is the limit,” Bear said.

For more information about Family Promise Mat-Su, call 907-357-6160 or visit fpm-su.com

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reporter Jacob Mann at jacob.mann@frontiersman.com