photo © 2008 Valerie Everett | more info
This email went out to our list of supporters and interested folks on June 22nd of 2010. We send something like this out most months – if you would like to get on that email list, please go here and give us your email address. Of course, we won’t share your info with anyone, and we won’t fill your inbox with crazy spam. (Or even sane spam.)
Dear Friends,
After the recent article about us in the local paper, I have been asked dozens of times just what we do, exactly.
We feed people. But we aren’t a feeding ministry. And while we do help people get jobs, we aren’t a job training program. Almost 50 times since Christmas we have gotten work shoes for folks. But we aren’t a clothing ministry. And in a few weeks, we will be celebrating the 4thof July in the park with our friends who live outside – but that isn’t what we do.
At any given moment, we may be doing any or all of those things. But we are primarily a ministry of presence.
Being homeless means having no one to listen to you when you hurt, no one to share your dreams with, and no one to celebrate with when good things happen. And no one to stand beside you when you are scared.
Which is why, several weeks ago, I was in the doctor’s office, sitting next to my friend Sarah, holding her hand as we wait to hear the bad news. She had recently had her first annual exam in 16 years. (When you are struggling to survive, sometimes you let things like that slide.) And when she had called for the results, they refused to give them to her over the phone. This is never good.
Her sponsor in NA died of cervical cancer, so she was scared to death of going to that doctor’s office by herself to hear the news. So there I was, looking very out of place as she and the doctor talk about cervixes and ovaries and so on. And when he told her it looked like cancer, I was the guy who held her as she cried. And prayed with her in the parking lot.
Today she got the results back from the specialist. It is cancer of the cervix, and in a few weeks she is going in for an operation. So it was only natural that she called me and some of our volunteers to let us know. And when they wheel her back in the hospital room after cutting on her, it will be our faces she will see when she wakes up.
What do we do? We are present. Often our being present doesn’t change things – she is going to have surgery if we are there or not. But now, she won’t be alone. And that is not a small thing at all.
Love Wins. Always.
Hugh Hollowell
http://lovewins.info
PS: The only reason I was able to be in that doctor’s office next to Sarah was because of your financial contributions that pay my salary. And it is your money that will buy the flowers in her room when she comes out of recovery. If you don’t currently support our work but want to, you can find out more about that here. We really need people who are willing to commit to ongoing monthly contributions, so we can budget.
photo © 2008 Valerie Everett | more info
