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In October 2025, we opened the Love Local Tent at our Lake Forest campus. Your Dream Now giving built it, making it one of the first places the Dream Now vision for our communities took physical shape. Twelve months later, your generosity has turned it into a hub that prepares and sends out essential supplies across our community, to other Saddleback campuses, and around the world.
Here's a look at what God has done through the tent in its first year!
1,176,597 total donations received
266,682 donation boxes distributed to our neighbors
92,671 snack bags for people experiencing homelessness
17,978 food boxes packed by hand
Behind those numbers are 4,828 volunteers who chose to show up for someone else. On the other side is a person, family, or community reminded that they are not forgotten.
Some of the tent's farthest-reaching work starts at a folding table. Small groups and families gather to make bracelets by hand, each one carrying a message of Jesus' love. This year, mission teams delivered 7,000 bracelets to women in the Philippine prison system. Others have gone to graduating youth in Ukraine and to families in Mexico through our ongoing mission trips. Closer to home, local groups use them to encourage our neighbors.
But the bracelets have done something for the people making them, too. Laura put it this way:
“When I first sat down in [the] Love Local Tent to thread beads, I thought I was just making a simple craft to bless a woman in a Philippine prison. I had no idea I was pulling up a chair to what would become a powerful fellowship. … Now, we return on our specific days not just to work, but to actively pray for one another, bear each other’s burdens, and build life-changing friendships.”
Twice a week, adults from Vocational Visions join the effort. Vocational Visions is a nonprofit that provides job training, life skills support, and social programs for adults with disabilities, and its participants fill the tent with laughter and energy. Together, we're strengthening our own church body even as we send hope across the globe.
A bag of groceries. Diapers for a growing family. A change of clothes. These things may seem small, but for someone in a hard season they bring real relief.
Melinda has served on Saddleback mission trips to Baja California, where supplies from the Love Local Tent travel with our teams. As she shared:
“We might be crossing the border to deliver diapers and food, but what we are truly handing these families is the reminder that they are seen, protected, and deeply loved by God.”
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry and care for those in need, we are doing it for him. Love Local puts that into practice every week.
Through Dream Now, you're making that possible. Every item you donate and every gift you give equips people like Melinda to show up, meet a practical need, and share the love of Jesus.
There's a place for you in the tent's second year:
Pull up a chair. Thread bracelets, pack care bags, or prep food boxes alongside your small group or family.
Bring supplies. Drop off new toilet paper, cleaning supplies, shelf-stable food, detergent, or diapers and wipes, or shop our Amazon wish list.
Give. Your Dream Now gift supports the work of the Love Local Tent, so teams can keep preparing and sending care wherever it's needed.
Find a serving opportunity with Love Local or give to Dream Now.
Because of your generosity, a tent in Lake Forest has become a place where neighbors get what they need, volunteers find family, and the love of Jesus travels across borders. We can't wait to see what God does in year two.
