My friend Jenny gets it right about serving food to poor people in Moore Square. This is the sort of post that lets me know my work out here is accomplishing something.

After my short bit the other day about day labor, I wrote a long piece for my friend Karen’s blog. If you want to know what the life of a day laborer is like, you may want to check it out.

There is lots going on here I want to tell you about, but right now I just do not have the time. However, check back tomorrow, when we introduce you to a new blogger on our site, tell you to save a date and much, much more.

Far and away, the phrase that gets people to this site is something along the lines of “Raleigh Homeless Help”. In other words, it is people who are either homeless or facing homelessness and they don’t know what to do.

Similarly, one of the main reasons my phone rings as often as it does is because I get calls from congregations and individuals who want to help a person who is homeless or near homeless, but they don’t know what resources are available.

That is why we have created RaleighHomeless.info, a website packed full of information and resources for those who are homeless and those who want to help the homeless.  We are still finishing it, but I wanted to go ahead and get it out there, so you could start sharing it with people you know. Right now the resources are geared primiarly to the homeless, but eventually we will have resources for congregations that want to reach out to the homeless as well.

The easiest way to get the news out and get in Google and the other search engines quickly is if you link to the new site – so if you have a blog, facebook, twitter, etc. it would be great if you could link to RaleighHomeless.info, even if you just mention it in a blogpost or tweet about it.

Also, if you know about resources we have not mentioned on the site, feel free to mention them in the comments below, or contact us through the new site.

Trying to clear up several items with one post…

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the homeless are increasingly wired – email, laptops and cell phones. I remarked on this a while back, and see it only increasing as we become more and more connected as a society.  Also remember that virtually no homeless adult was born that way – most had jobs, houses, families, etc. before the precipitating event that drove them out of their residence. When you become homeless, you do not become stupid, forgetting how to set up a hot mail account, how to email your family, how to cruise craigslist looking for jobs, etc.

Several weeks ago, the media made a big deal out of several studies that show that the poor are much more generous than the wealthy. This has very much been my experience – I told a touching story about one I was the recipient of such generosity here. My favorite quote from the article:

“We’re not scared of poverty the way rich people are,” he said. “We know how to get the lights back on when we can’t pay the electric bill.”

And for all of you who were wondering about Emily - I saw her this weekend and she told me her husband is in jail right now, and looks like he will be there for several months. Pray that while he is in there we can get her to leave so he can’t continue to victimize her when he gets out.