Over the past week I have received a few e-mails asking if everything was O.K. because it has been a while since our last news letter. First… thank you to those who were concerned and second this story might shed some light on the time gap between our last news letter.

Our doors have been open for just about three years now. You would think that writing stories for the web site and news letters would be easier then ever before, but that is just not true.

To write the stories, the mechanics that is easy but the topics of the stories aren’t as easy. Weeks go by and I sit here scratching my head about what to write. I can continue to tell you about the people we help or show you pictures of what we do but it is still the same old thing I have been sharing with you for the past three years. Nothing really has changed.

I guess that is it in a nut shell “nothing has changed” in the past three years. Kassams are still being fired at us on a regular base; people still suffer from traumatic shock. It would be nice to say they suffer from POST traumatic shock but I can’t. Loud booms still make you jump and you still look for the next place to hide when you’re out and about.

People still come to us and ask for help (at least ten a week) and the two hundred and eight nine families come to us for help each week. People here in Sderot still live well below the poverty line and new jobs are far and few between.

I wish I could report that we are no longer needed, that we no longer need your support, or prayers. I wish I could tell you that Hope For Sderot has accomplished it’s mission and goal, but it hasn’t. As long as terrorists are determined to wipe us off the face of the earth we will unfortunately never accomplish are goal completely.

Not everything is bleak however. Over the past three years we have helped people by giving them food, clothing, and school supplies. We have brought joy to kid’s faces with Hanukkah parties and Purim parties. We have visited our children from Sderot in the hospital and we have comforted our friends in their times of grief.

We have shared the Hope For Sderot, that namely being that G-D has not forgotten His children, that He loves them and wants a personal relationship with them. We have shared that G-D does not like religion and dose not want religious people but wants to be Abba, Father.

We have shared that yet while G-D is everywhere to include heaven that our G-D, Abba Ha’shamiam, Our Father in heaven wants to live in our hearts and He wants to be part of every daily lives, just not on Shabbat.

You see… nothing has changed.