(Las Vegas, Nevada) - Las Vegas is a city built on hospitality, so when the pandemic hit and hotels and restaurants were closed, the economic situation was extremely bleak.
Mike Bodine, Senior Leader of Central Church, explains, "The entire state shut down all restaurants, all hotels, all entertainment."
The impact?
"It felt like we were all on the hundredth floor in an elevator and someone cut the cable. It was just a matter of how hard we were gonna crash when we hit bottom. That just cut everyone's livelihood. We had 200 food pantries at the time (only 5 were open) and Central Church was one of those and we went from one food pantry to 26 overnight," Mike shared. "It quickly dawned on us--this is more than the church can handle."
"God put that on my heart--we have to help our city. I had no idea how we were going to help, but the next day the Lord said, 'look what's already in your hand' and what was in our hand is that we already had a pantry. We were feeding over 200,000 people a week and within a few months we had given out 10 million pounds of food."
Hope for the City was born with a vision to bring other churches, citizens, non-profits, businesses and the community at large to all come together for a common good.
Today, with the help and leadership of CEO and President Mike Bodine, Hope for the City has over 200 partnerships. More than 2000 volunteers have worked hard to make sure that no one has gone hungry.
Hear how Hope for the City has impacted the city of Las Vegas:
Hope for the City also has served senior adults and immune-compromised people well with more than 20,000 home food deliveries.
Where did Hope for the City get all of this food?
Mike says, "It came from everywhere. Because casinos shut down, they obviously had spoilage in their fridge and so we took all of that and incorporated that into our food relief efforts. There were food companies from Cisco Foods to US Foods to Nicolaus and Company...there were food banks that once were functional and had food storage and we took that...we were partnered with Feeding America and we received help from Convoy Of Hope. All of these entities came together to really help accelerate our efforts and we're very very thankful for each and every one of them.
It goes back to what we all know to be true--people don't need to be preached at, they need the gospel lived. We can live out Jesus and be His hands and feet. And once people know that we're for them and with them, we're giving them hope and we care then their hearts are open to hear the message of the Person we're serving. And that's the greatest blessing."