Angel Mother Lawrence Dedicates Life to Feeding Poor; Needs Help Paying Mortgage

[happy_liberal]

"FEEDING CHILDREN

Every day Lawrence and her husband load up with cardboard boxes and drive to grocery stores to pick up donated food. They feed children after school and give food boxes and clothes to people who arrive at their door every day around 4:15 p.m.

The mortgage wasn't the first problem on her mind, she said as we drove over to Carrs Aurora Village.

"We need a truck," she said. A big one, tall enough to back up to the truck bay at grocery stores, so Jacob doesn't have to lift the heavy boxes so far.

Jacob totaled their van the week before, she said, and now she wasn't going to let him drive anymore. Their insurance paid for a rental but that was coming to an end. They had a borrowed van lined up, but they needed a permanent one.

The reasons for the foreclosure were mostly the same as last time, she said. Her renters kept slipping away in the night, she said. Then someone stole her credit card and spent money all over town. The pipes burst, the sheetrock turned mushy and had to be repaired, eating through their fixed income and savings. She recently hired a property manager to take care of the details. The bank said she and Jacob need $19,000 to keep from being thrown out."

Mother Lawrence leaves the mortgage up to God
http://community.adn.com/adn/node/146584


update for anyone who was interested in donating when I posted this story previously:

"I finally reached Mother Lawrence today. (Read original column here.) She said her phone had been mistakenly disconnected and so she was afraid people had called trying to donate money to her cause, but they weren't able to. She just had it turned back on this afternoon.

So far, a few people have donated a little under $1,000 toward her debt of $19,000. Other people came with clothes and food.

"One guy came with $500," she said. "But mostly it's been $10 here, $5 there."

She said the bank might negotiate if she had several thousand. I asked her how long she had until the bank needed the money.

"They're waitin' on it now," she said.

I asked her what she would do if she couldn't come up with it.

"We're not gonna talk about that," she said.

Then she had to go. Hungry people where lining up in the yard, she said."
http://community.adn.com/node/146654

[happy_liberal]

1. more

"I watched people trail in. There was a 20-something girl with a pierced lip, a harried single mother and her daughter, a 10-year-old girl, the oldest of eight, with her mother who spoke only Hmong, a middle-aged man who kept saying "I have nothing" in Spanish, and a delicate, wrinkled German woman whom Lawrence hugged for a long time. She sized up each person who came in, tucking in extra chocolate milk, or bread or cake, depending.

A grandmother from Laos came through the door, wearing only a sweater. Lawrence asked her where her coat was. She spoke no English. She looked at Lawrence blankly.

"You stay right there," Lawrence said, and disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later, she came back with a fur coat from her bedroom closet and wrapped it around the woman's shoulders. The woman smiled, showing a few missing teeth. She turned to a nephew and fluffed her hair like a movie star.

"You ain't givin' the best you got, you ain't giving nothing," Lawrence told me as the woman left, her box heavy with extra custard pie. "God will always take care of you."







This is the address to help her:

Mother Lawrence Foundation
3609 Richmond Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99508-1134
[phone]

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. +1

[happy_liberal]

3. thanks

:hi: