Earlier this month, our local post office designated us as Suite 100 in our new building. All incoming mail now needs to show our suite number for ease of delivery (because we have renters with their own suite numbers). 

Please update your records and send all future correspondence to:

CITYGATE NEWORK
2153 CHUCKWAGON RD  STE 100
COLORADO SPRINGS  CO 80919

District Conferences Update (Including Bluegrass Info) 
Regional conferences for Citygate Network’s districts will begin next week, following the cancellation of the Bluegrass District conference, which was scheduled for this week in storm-ravaged North Carolina. 

While we regret the decision to cancel this conference, we know it will give local residents the opportunity to concentrate on “the home front.” All registration fees paid to Citygate Network will be refunded, as well as deposits paid to Ridgecrest Conference Center. We encourage all who had booked flights and other transportation to investigate opportunities for refunds and credits from those providers.

Four other districts will still have “traditional” district conferences at locations in their areas, and the remaining districts—now including the Bluegrass District—will participate in Citygate Network’s “virtual” district conference. There is still time to register for all of these events, and we urge you to involve downline staff members who might not be able to attend a Citygate Network Annual Convention.

The calendar for these events looks like this with the Citygate Network representative attending listed in parentheses):

The Northern Lights District, which gathered in Milwaukee during the annual convention, has the option of joining the closest district events across the border in the U.S. and/or taking part in the virtual district conference.

Visit www.citygatenetwork.org>Events for more details. Registration and sponsor/exhibitor information is currently available for the districts holding live events.

Continued Prayer for Those Affected by Florence
As record-setting, torrential rain continues to fall in the Carolinas and spread northward, Citygate Network’s staff and Intercessory Prayer Team continue to be in prayer. We are asking our members to join us in seeking God’s protection of life and property for member missions and all individuals in the storm’s remaining path.


Citygate Network Benefits Program to Begin Open Enrollment in October
With the total number of employees who are eligible to enroll in the Citygate Network Benefits Program now well over 1,000 lives, the next step is open enrollment (OE). Our OE period will be from October 29 to November 9, and it will be facilitated electronically via our benefit administration system from PlanSource. If you have not done so already, please make sure to complete your on-boarding survey ASAP; we need this completed in order to build the enrollment system for your mission. More details around the enrollment system and employee call center will be made available in the coming weeks as we finish the implementation process for all participating missions. 

In an effort to prepare each eligible employee for OE, we are hosting four web-based meetings to make sure that everyone fully understands the benefits and how to enroll. OE meetings are available to anyone who would like to participate and will be hosted on the following days:

• Wednesday, October 17 at 12:00 p.m. MST
• Wednesday, October 24 at 12:00 p.m. MST
• Wednesday, October 31 at 12:00 p.m. MST
• Wednesday, November 7 at 12:00 p.m. MST

For your reference, you can find the WebEx info for all four meetings by clicking here. 


Citygate Network Announces Staff Changes 
We have some staff changes that we want to tell you about:

• Sam Edwards, hired in April, serves as Director of Education and Engagement. Selena Hayle, who had the title Director of Engagement for many years, is now our newest Regional Coordinator, serving in the Southeast, including the Caribbean.
• Marcy Sandoval, long-time Member Data and Support Manager, moved to Texas with her husband, Ruben, to be closer to family. Christine Matos has served part-time for six-plus years as Executive Assistant to President John Ashmen. On September 10, Christine moved into the part-time position Marcy vacated. 
• Alice Gifford starts full-time on October 1 as John Ashmen’s new Executive Assistant. We’ll introduce you to Alice in a future publication.

Here is what these changes mean for you:

• Starting immediately, please now contact Christine (cmatos@citygatenetwork.org) for information about your membership records, renewals, event registration, forgotten passwords, and organizations to suggest for membership.
• Starting October 1, please contact Alice Gifford (agifford@citygatenetwork.org) for anything having to do with John Ashmen’s calendar.

Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, plans to commit an initial $2 billion to fund a new charitable organization dedicated to helping homeless families and educating preschoolers. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the entrepreneur and his wife will form the Bezos Day One Fund to support existing nonprofits that help homeless families and create a new nonprofit network of Montessori-inspired preschools in low-income communities. 

Instagram wants to help reach people affected by the opioid crisis. A new feature in the app will surface alerts with links to information about recovery and treatment services when users search for hashtags related to opioids as well as other illegal drugs. The feature is available now in the United States and will roll out to users in the rest of the world soon. According to a report by Mashable, Instagram has blocked many hashtags related to opioids and other drugs. Though the app’s rules prohibit people from buying or selling prescription and illegal drugs on its service, that hasn’t stopped people from trying; that prompted the company to block or limit the visibility of certain hashtags when it detects misuse, but not every opioid-related hashtag is automatically blocked.

More than 20 people living on Portland’s streets recently received something that will make bettering their lives exponentially easier: a replacement government ID. They received it thanks to a new pilot program spearheaded by Portland police and Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare. It’s called the ID Project. According to a report by Portland’s local news station KGW8, the project is part of a larger campaign aimed at getting minorities into housing. The project involves police contacting people living on Portland’s streets and helping to connect them with resources that will help them get into housing. 

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Many older Americans are prescribed opioids because they can’t afford alternative treatment. Among Americans aged 65 and older, the poorest are the most likely to have used prescription opioids, according to a study by the University of Buffalo. In a report by Market Watch, researchers noted that the poor had about double the rate of opioid use compared to wealthier groups. Some 2.1 million people in the U.S. are battling opioid addiction. The number of opioid overdose deaths doubled to 42,000 from 2010 to 2016, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The rate of drug overdose deaths in 2015 was more than 2.5 times the rate in 1999, partly due to a fall in the price of heroin and accessibility to prescription drugs. Opioid overdoses jumped 30 percent from July 2016 to September 2017 in 52 areas across 45 state; this includes increases in the Midwest by 70 percent and an overall spike of 54 percent in the largest cities in the country.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines human trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery that involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion of a person to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. According to an article in The Gazette, trafficking is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. According to the International Labor Organization, roughly 27 million people are trafficked globally, and more than 500,000 people are trafficked in the United States. The National Human Trafficking Hotline counts more than 8,500 cases opened by law enforcement in 2017. 

A new report highlights alarming statistics regarding the physical and emotional health of Canadian children. According to a Global News article, the report, titled Raising Canada, was released by the O’Brien Institute for Public Health, and is based on data from a number of government agencies, including Statistics Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. The report states that 1.2 million Canadian children currently live in low-income housing, and 10.7 percent of families with children under age 6 say they experience food insecurity. Perhaps even more alarming is that a quarter of all children have not received their full recommended doses of diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus vaccine by the age of 2.

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BBQ Pit Master: Portland Rescue Mission, Portland, OR

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