Published: August 01, 2008 02:44 pm         

Thorns & Roses

Friday, Aug. 1, 2008

Thorns & Roses is a weekly feature highlighting the best and worst of the

week.



Roses



• To the folks who teamed up to raise $10,000 last week for the Emmaus Mission Center's food pantry. The Cass County Community Foundation organized the event in cooperation with radio stations WHZR, WLHM and WSAL, and the foundation matched, dollar for dollar, the first $2,500 in pledges. This is the second year in a row the foundation has come to the rescue of the food pantry with a radio-thon. This year’s event far outdistanced last year’s, which raised $6,000. Deanna Crispen, executive director of the community foundation, predicted the donations would be adequate to carry the pantry through the end of the year.



• To the board members and residents at Emmaus Mission Center who joined to grow a garden at the center. Residents have planted strawberries, beans, cucumbers, squash, broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, basil, sweet potatoes and pumpkins, and they’ve been partaking of the results. The garden has helped the center to get through the normally lean months of summer, and it has provided the center’s residents with a healthier diet. It has also helped the residents move toward self-sufficiency.



• To the youth group DV8 at First Baptist Church of Galveston, which recently took a mission trip to neighboring Miami County. Maple Lawn Trailer Court had nearly 100 young children and nowhere for them to play. The youth group raised $3,000 and spent three days upgrading the mobile home court’s playground. And now, thanks to the efforts of 15 youth group members and three adults, the children at the trailer park have a safe place to play. It's great when young people have a chance to help the less fortunate. The youth at First Baptist Church found a way to do that without straying far from home.



• To Ivy Tech Community College, which has teamed up with a foreclosure prevention network to conduct free workshops this weekend for struggling homeowners across the state. The workshops in Evansville, Indianapolis and South Bend will give homeowners a chance to meet face-to-face with housing counselors or their lenders. Ivy Tech and the Indiana Foreclosure Prevention Network, which is made up of more than 40 banks, community organizations and housing agencies, are planning several other workshops. The programs are clearly needed. For the first quarter of this year, 3.72 percent of all outstanding loans in Indiana were in foreclosure, while 7.05 percent of loans were delinquent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Those figures put Indiana fourth in the nation for foreclosures, behind only Florida, Nevada and Ohio. Last fall, the state launched a help line — (877) GET-HOPE — offering free mortgage foreclosure counseling.