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Los Angeles NRI Sikh community participate at Fred Jordan Mission
Los Angeles, Dec. 25, 2009
Jagjit Bains
Los Angeles, California – On the chilly morning of December 20th, the Los Angeles Sikh community gathered together at the Fred Jordan Mission to participate in the Annual Christmas Toy Drive. This year, similar to previous years, the Sikh community played an integral part in distributing various toys and necessity items such as clothes, hygiene products, and nonperishable food packages. Lines of up to 10,000 underprivileged children and their families circled the blocks alongside Towne Ave and E 4th Street. Starting at around 8:30am, the Sikh community packaged and distributed gift bags filled with a myriad of items for the children – dolls, stuffed animals, action figures, puzzles, soccer and basketball balls, trading cards, and books. The Sikh community also made it a priority to aid the women and various family members that would endure chilly weather conditions this winter by supplying warm sweaters, scarves, gloves, hats, and blankets. Various hygiene products such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, body wash, shampoo, and Band-Aids were also donated. In order to further lend a hand, food packages filled with canned food, rice, beans, and other staple items were given to each family. This event is not only a way for Sikhs in Los Angeles to come together but also a way to recognize and help members of other communities. The Annual Christmas Toy Drive and many other events at the Fred Jordan Mission are very dear to the Los Angeles Sikh community. Gunjiv Singh, a member of the Los Angeles Sikh community, comments, “I love coming out to the Fred Jordan Mission to help those who need the most support during this time of year. It’s an amazing way for the Los Angeles sangat to come together and show our support as a community”. Since 1944, Fred Jordan Missions has worked on the streets of inner city Los Angeles and throughout the world to help share God's love by providing nourishing food, warm clothing, blankets and other vital services to people in need. Fred Jordan Missions has served the physical and spiritual needs of poor and helpless people, not only in the United States, but also in the teeming cities of Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, and also in the cities and jungles of Ghana and Liberia, West Africa.
When Miki Jordan was growing up in Covina as the oldest of seven children, she spent every holiday on Skid Row serving food to the homeless. It was her family's profession.
Jordan's father, a minister, founded Fred Jordan Missions, a nonprofit that opened its doors in 1944. Her mother, Willie Jordan, now runs the mission, which has provided food and assistance to thousands of families and children on Skid Row. Jordan continued in the same vein, serving for the past 14 years as president and chief executive of Para Los Ninos, the Los Angeles non-profit agency that helps children and families get out of poverty
With his wife Willie, Fred built orphanages, schools, hospitals and missions around the world to share the life-changing power of a living God among those whose lives are a daily struggle for meaningful existence.
In 1951 Fred began a weekly television program, Church in the Home... that aired across the country. Now in its 55th year, Willie continues the weekly TV program, sharing the needs of hungry, hurting families here in America.
Since Fred’s death in 1988, his wife Willie, several of their children, and a dedicated Fred Jordan Mission team of caring professionals carry on the work among the poor and needy in the inner city, bringing help, hope and the love of God to tens of thousands of children and families each year.
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