The International Lutheran Women’s Missionary League (LWML) has generously expanded its support of Concordia Seminary’s How Will They Hear? Campaign. A mission grant of $50,000, awarded at the LWML’s 2009 national convention and disbursed this month to the Seminary, will allow for the purchase of new frozen food storage equipment vital to the Seminary’s Food Bank and campus dining hall units. Matched with an equal amount through a challenge grant extended by The Charles E. Benidt Foundation, the LWML grant supports the Place component of the Seminary’s $77 million comprehensive fundraising effort.

“We are thrilled that the women of the LWML are supporting our vision of improving the quality of each student’s Seminary experience through such a generous grant,” said Mark Hofman, director of special projects in the Seminary’s Advancement division. “We’re confident that students, their spouses, and their children will benefit greatly through the additional capacity this grant brings to our Food Bank services. We encourage readers to extend a word of thanks on behalf of our future pastors, missionaries, deaconesses, and leaders to individual members of the International LWML.”

The replacement of an inefficient and obsolete walk-in freezer, and the purchase of industrial grade display cabinets for cold and frozen foods, is the first step in a two-stage plan that will eventually lead to a relocation of the Seminary’s Food Bank out of the basement in Loeber Hall and into renovated space within the Wartburg-Koburg Student Commons. The Seminary’s Food Bank supplies students and their families with free food and personal items in quantities based on the size of the family. The replacement walk-in freezer will be large enough to accommodate frozen foods used by the dining hall kitchen staff as well as donations of frozen meats and vegetables made available to families through the Food Bank. The display cabinets will initially be installed in the existing Food Bank, then relocated to the Wartburg-Koburg Student Commons when renovation work is complete. An additional benefit of replacing the existing equipment is that the new unit will be more energy-efficient, and reduce annual maintenance costs over the obsolete unit it replaces.

During the 2005-07 biennium, the International LWML funded a $100,000 grant in support of deaconess training through Concordia Seminary’s Ethnic Immigrant Institute of Theology. During the 2007-09 biennium, International LWML’s mites provided $25,000 in support of deaf layperson and clergy training carried out in the name of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Both grants are counted in totals reported for the Campaign’s Pastors component.

For more information, contact Seminary Advancement at 1-800-822-5287.