Carole opened the meeting at 7:13 by reading St. Paul's letter to the Galatians Chapter 4 verses 4-7. The minutes were read by Barbara Yannaco, accepted by Joann Bunnell, and seconded by Linda Hunt. In attendance were: Yvonne Alexander, John Lucid, Linda Layton, Kay Coyle, Nancy Guarino, Linda Hunt, Laura and Bucky Ryan, Angela Schuler, Chuck and Joanne Bunnell, Ray Reilly, Bill and Carole Grafer, Jim Mullen, and Barbara Yannaco. Our HPNAP report for Dec. 2008: we served 94 households which included 149 children, 167 adults, and 21 elderly. This represents an increase of 17.5 % over December 2007. We also distributed 135 Christmas baskets. In December 2008 we bought 2621 pounds of food that cost $2282.22. We used a $1000.00 credit that we had from United Way of Dutchess County and a $255 credit  from Walmart to reduce our final cost to $1027.22. Chuck and Joanne went to the food bank on January 14th. They returned with 3889 pounds of food which cost $2724.54. On hand at the food closet to help put away all of this food were: Nick, Carole, Kay, Jim Falanga, Bucky, and Laura. Dutchess County Boces runs a program called Community Solutions to Transportation where you may donate a car which can then be given to a needy person. To donate a car you can call Deborah Goodpaster at 845-486-4405 .If you have a client who may be able to use this help please share this phone number with them. United Methodist Church of Poughquag  is unable to have a food closet of their own so they have decided to donate food to our closet. We thank Pastor Salamoy  and her congregation for their contributions.

We have received $1147.00 from Stop and Shop’s Food for Friends program. Blessed Kateri’s religious ed program will be holding a drive for us during the weeks of February 8th and 15th. They will be asking for paper, cleaning and personal hygiene items. Chuck will have the new answering machine up and running tonight. We would like to thank Yvonne Alexander and her husband for not only storing food from the PBA drive at their home but also bringing it to the closet when enough room was available .We would also like to thank Kim Busche for storing some of the holiday turkeys in her freezer while space was at a premium in the closet. The St. Denis youth group will be holding their annual “Souper Bowl” on Feb. 1st. Once again Linda and her committee did a wonderful job with the Christmas baskets under adverse  conditions. Some people did not receive their baskets for a day or so because of the weather but Linda did not give up until everyone had received their basket. Linda puts in many many hours on this project and with the bad weather the last 2 years it has become even more difficult and time consuming. A discussion was held to see if we can come up with a way to make this easier and also make the gifts more equitable. Many ideas were discussed and are being looked into. This is a topic we will probably talk about many times this year and anyone who has ideas is welcomed to come and express them at a meeting. The next meeting will be February 11, 2009. Carole ended the meeting at 8:30 pm with a prayer. Submitted by Barbara Yannaco