In our country, those working hard to escape poverty face numerous financial traps most of us can’t fathom. Imagine for a moment that you accidentally parked somewhere you shouldn’t and your car is towed. What a massive inconvenience!

Rather than focus on the vehicles OnRamp needs, let me tell you about one of the families on our waiting list hoping to receive a vehicle this month. This family, a husband and wife with 3 school age-children, has just one vehicle: a 20 year old SUV with a failing transmission, no AC or heater, and only 1 working window. Oh, and when it rains, the car leaks.

This was a rollercoaster week for OnRamp. First, the high: hearing from a recent client, a single mom, about the IMPACT our gift of a reliable car was having our her kids.

We chose Isaiah 61 for this year’s OnRamp Christmas ornament because it reminds us of Jesus’ heart for the poor, the struggling, and the suffering. It reminds us that Jesus chose to identify with the lowly and rejected of society; not the rich and powerful. Our culture fixates upon those with fame, beauty, intelligence, strength. Jesus fixed His eyes on the weak, the sick, the dependent, those in need - the polar opposite of Instagram-influencer-society.

Through an amazing chain of unlikely events, OnRamp was chosen three years ago as a Capstone Research Project by the A&M Bush School. A class of graduate students spent a year studying transportation-related charities throughout the United States to identify best practices for our fledgling ministry. Among the many lessons learned, one particularly stood out to me: there are only about a dozen charities like OnRamp in the entire country, and only one besides us in all of Texas!

Today we’re celebrating client #82; not an individual, but a whole organization! This is the second time we’ve been able to bless an entire charity with a reliable vehicle designed to empower their ministry to people in need. The Nest (https://thenestbcs.org) is a local Christian nonprofit dedicated to helping the lost, hurting, and addicted find healing and learn to live again.

I’ve been longing to share this story about a sweet widow OnRamp has been able to help through your generosity. To protect her identity, we’ll call her “Naomi,” a widow from the book of Ruth in the Old Testament. She lives out in the country in a home of her own off a dirt road. She and her husband built a family there, with four generations living under one roof. But just like Naomi, both her husband and her son died, leaving her on her own to care for her family.

If we had to guess what form of communication God loves best based simply on the word counts of various genres in the Bible, STORIES would easily win. Narratives dominate the pages of scripture because they simultaneously inspire and instruct the human soul. We were made for stories

Two months ago, on Aug 9 (which happens to be my wedding anniversary!), we got to celebrate OnRamp client #75... and this one's extra special! We were blessed to donate this reliable #Toyota Rav4 to Naomi, the new Director of Survivor Advocacy at Unbound Bryan College Station, a ministry that supports survivors and resources our community to fight human trafficking in the Brazos Valley.

The more you know... I did some research for a talk on "The Faces of Poverty" with the Young Men's Service League at A&M Consolidated High School. The results surprised me. The 2019 poverty rate in US = 10.5%; in TX = 14.7%; in Brazos county, excluding A&M students = 20.0%, or 1 in 5