St. Vincent de Paul Society
St. Denis/St. Columba Conference
Hopewell Junction, NY 12533

November 14, 1999

Dear Members,

Thank you for your long-term commitment to the needy families in our
community.  During October 1999, we serviced 59 families including 106
children, 99 adults, and 7 elderly.

As you know, keeping the food closet filled is a difficult task even
though we receive generous support from our parishioners, local
organizations and businesses and from New York State.  Just this month,
ShopRite Supermarkets through their "PARTNERS IN CARING" program has
established a line of credit for our food pantry at the Regional Food
Bank in Cornwall, NY in the amount of $2500.00.  Since the grant is
unrestricted, we have been able to purchase neccessities we have not
stocked in a long time.  Also, St. Denis Youth Group collected a wide
variety of items to fill the bare shelves.  Many of the items came from
the A & P in Arthursburg.

In November, the religious education classes of both St. Denis and St.
Columba will have drives to provide food and hygiene items.  You can see
it takes tremendous effort and work to keep food available in the
closet.  Please remember on your next visit to the closet that the items
have to be shared among many families.  Also, the log must be filled
in every time you take food so that we can continue to get
appropriations from New York State.

Our Thanksgiving Basket Program coordinated by Linda Hunt is in
progress.  There will be 71 baskets given away.  The Sons of Italy in
America -- Joe DiMaggio Lodge--has made a generous holiday donation to
our program.

Currently there are 6 families waiting for members to help them.  If you
know of someone interested in joining us, please speak to them.   They
can call our rectory telephone number (227-7863) or come to a meeting
for information.  We meet every month (except July & August) on the
second Wednesday at 7 PM in St. Columba's school library.

Lastly, we urge all of you to come to a meeting.  Our meetings provide
stability to the organization.  A wide range of pertinent topics are
discussed.  Through your ideas and thoughts we can strengthen and widen
our ministry.  The next meeting will be December 8 including a small
Christmas celebration.

God bless you,
Carole Grafer, Chairperson