Tony was introduced to me by a formerly homeless man whom I had helped several years ago. “Tony is a good guy,” my friend said. “He just doesn’t have anybody.”

After meeting Tony, I did not have high hopes. He was living in a half-way house that has a reputation for not being particularly well run, he was six weeks sober and was a convicted felon.

We agreed to start meeting on Thursday mornings at a local coffee shop. On our first meeting, he told me he wanted to die, because he saw no way out. That was four months ago.

Every week, he tells me about the stress that comes from living in a house full of addicts. We talk about the endless search for a job that will ignore his felony record that came from a petty drug charge. I show him coping methods to help manage his stress. We drink good coffee (which you pay for) and he shows me pictures of the ex-wife and kids he drank out of his life.

While I am the one sitting in that coffee shop with Tony, you are the one who makes it possible.

Over the last four months, a few times you have helped him make the $98 weekly rent it costs him to stay in the halfway house. When we met, he had a prepaid cellphone that cost .60 cents a minute to use. He was spending over $100 a month to stay in touch with potential employers. You bought him another phone that offers unlimited minutes for $35 a month.

When he got a part time job unloading produce trucks in an un-air-conditioned warehouse, you bought him a monthly bus pass so he could get to work. Tony is fifty years old and has poor circulation, so when the doctor prescribed a medicine to help with his circulation, you paid the $5 to get the prescription filled. Oh, and it was a prescription he had carried around in his pocket for a week, because he did not want to ask for help yet again.

Last Thursday, Tony asked if I could run him up to the dollar store, so he could buy the one dollar package of detergent to wash his clothes. When we got there, I saw him eying the toiletries, so I convinced him to let you pay two dollars for a pack of razors and a new deodorant stick. He counted out his pennies and nickles for the detergent, however.

When we get back in the car, he is silent. When I press him, he tells me that he is filled with overwhelming gratitude. I try to wave him off.

“No,” he says. “It is a big deal. When I met you, I wanted to die because I was convinced no one cared. Please tell the people who give you this money that I am so grateful. That I could not have made it this long without you guys. And that while it may not seem like a big deal to them, it has changed my life. Hell, it probably saved my life.”

I agree. A big reason Tony has stayed sober these six months and stayed housed and stayed sane has been because of the work you people pay me to do. Yes, you paid for his toiletries and bus pass and helped a couple of times with his rent, but you also paid my salary that lets me spend two hours a week with a felon in a coffee shop.

If you are one of our contributors, Tony and I both thank you. If you have not yet decided to help support our work, I hope you will, because I know lots of Tonys.

“Tasha overdosed “, were the first words out of Ramone’s mouth when I answered the phone.

Ramone is one of our most fervent volunteers, who checks in regularly with one of the homeless camps near his house. He often brings me up to date on the latest. I could have gone all day without hearing this.

Tasha is 19 and frustrating to no end. She has been on her own for the last three years after running away from an abusive home. She quickly discovered street smarts she did not know she had, enabling her to morph from popular 10th grader to crafty street urchin.

It does not hurt her cause a bit that most men think she is beautiful.

Unfortunately, along with not finishing high school, she also picked up a drug habit with no means to pay for it. So, she swaps sex for drugs.

Her drug of choice is heroin, but occasionally, like she did this time, she speedballs, mixing crack and heroin. And like most users, she can look you right in the face and tell you whatever you want to hear.

Like when I went and visited her in the hospital. She hugs me and, with a tear in her eye, tells me she almost died.
“I don’t want this life anymore,” she says.

I want to believe her. But I don’t.

I want to believe her because, with her poor judgment and track record, she is a sure candidate for HIV or Hepatitis C. Or ending up with a bad trick. I really wish she wanted to quit. But she doesn’t.

Honoring people’s choices is hard. Loving people when they choose poorly is even harder.

Four days later, she leaves the hospital against medical advice because she is healed, she tells me on the phone the next day. She thanks me for the shampoo and snacks I brought her in the hospital, and asks me to pray for her.

She refuses to go to NA meetings. She says they are for losers who want to whine rather than take control. Instead, she tells me she has quit on her own. Willpower, she says.

I want to believe her. But I don’t.

# # #

A lot of you have heard about Eric’s murder in Moore Square a few weeks ago. For those who haven’t, the short version is that we were serving biscuits when another man walked up to Eric and stabbed him. Eric died and the police arrested the other guy. I wrote a blog post about it here, and NBC17 interviewed meabout our response.

###

Speaking of the blog, if you go here and give us your email,  you get an email whenever we update the blog. (This is a separate list than the one you are on for this email).

On the calendar of the Christian church, we are in the season of Advent – a time of waiting and anticipation.

One thing life on the streets teaches you is waiting. Waiting in line – at the shelter, at the clinic, at the soup kitchen. Waiting in court.

Right now, I am waiting on Stephanie.

On the coldest day of the year so far, I was in the park with about 20 volunteers who had collected winter gear for our friends who live outside. I was huddled in a group when a volunteer ran up and grabbed me.

It’s 20 degrees outside, but the young girl she takes me to is wearing cargo shorts, a hoodie and sneakers. She’s shivering violently and her lips are blue, her cocoa skin is pale and ashy. It’s Stephanie – 20 years old and only occasionally homeless, she often floats from house to house.

We get Stephanie track pants and a thick coat and socks and put her in my car, where she can sit in the heat and change clothes in relative privacy.

After 10 minutes or so pass, I take two cups of coffee over to the car. She cries as she tells me the whole story.

Her boyfriend is in jail for beating up a guy who groped her. Meanwhile, she was staying with one of his friends. Which was cool until 3 o’clock this morning when she woke up to find him in bed, naked, next to her.

When she protested, he threw her and a handful of clothes out the door. She had been wandering in the cold for the last six hours, waiting to find me in the park.

She has no where to go, so I offer to put her up for tonight in a motel. Tomorrow we can go get her stuff and maybe talk to the police. Her face lights up and she says yes, but first she needs to go to the library to check email and let her family know she is ok. I drop her at the library and we plan to meet at 5PM in a place we both know.

5PM comes and she doesn’t show. She isn’t there. Or at the library. Or in the park. And since then, she hasn’t been at the soup kitchen, or the shelters, or the bus station. Or anywhere else I looked.

I lost her.

I have no idea if she is OK. Or safe. Or hurt. Or dead.

But still, I look. And pray. And wait.

Thank You

I pray you and your family have a great Christmas this year. And for the generosity you have shown over the last year that permits people like me to wait for people like Stephanie, I don’t know how to do anything more than say “Thank You”.

Please pray for Stephanie, and for the hundreds just like her, who wander and wonder if anyone cares.

Thanks to you, we can say yes, there is.

We do.

Dear friends,

Instead of the usual story from the inner city, this month you receive only an apology from me. Last week I was involved in an accident that resulted in my breaking my left collarbone. Since then, I have been largely laid up on the couch, under the influence of pain medication, arm bound in a sling while waiting on the doctors to decide what they’re going to do next.

Because of this, some things (like the writing of this newsletter) are temporarily falling to the wayside. I hope you understand. Luckily, because of our network of devoted volunteers much of the normal work of Love Wins-feeding ministries, hospital visits, prescription drug help, and so on-continues unabated.

I have an appointment with an orthopedist for Monday, where hopefully they will give me some idea of what the future looks like. Until then, I will probably be leading from the rear and relying heavily on those previously mentioned volunteers.

Keep me in your prayers over the next few weeks as my body works to mend itself. Renee and I thank God for your love and support. Love Wins could not exist without you.

Hopefully in a few weeks things will be back to normal-at least as normal as they ever get around here.

By the way, if you want to know more details about my accident, you can read all about it in this blog post I wrote over on my personal blog.

Love wins. Always.

Hugh Hollowell

Dear Friends,

There were six of us around a large table, deep in the bowels of the Social Services building. Present were four people from Child Protective Services, myself, and my friend Linda. We were there to decide what was going to happen to Linda’s baby.

Linda’s life is far from perfect. Raped repeatedly by her father from age seven, as an adult she has been in a string of relationships that have led to several abortions and physical assaults. She spent two weeks in a coma after one of the beatings. But this time was going to be different. Jimmy was a good guy, so when she found out they were pregnant, they decided to keep the baby and raise it. A few weeks ago, Jimmy ran off with Linda’s best friend, leaving her with a 10 month old baby and no way to pay the rent.

So – no income, no hope of income any time soon, no child support, no place to live. And four folks across a table, deciding what is going to happen to her and her baby. That was my morning. My lunch was spent in the lobby, holding Linda as she sobbed and snotted all over my shirt after hearing the state will take her baby next Wednesday unless some family member should step up. After a lifetime of their ignoring her, we don’t have high hopes for this.

I don’t know what you are supposed to tell a person in that situation. No “pastoral” words came to mind. But Linda felt loved and cared for, and that is no small thing. I have to think Jesus would agree.

Love Wins recently lost a net total of $250 a month after that article mentioned (truthfully) that we don’t proselytize. We love and are inspired by Jesus, but the primary goal of our ministry is less about getting people to heaven someday and a bit more about walking with people like Linda through hell right now.

Let me be completely honest – we really need that $250 a month. It represents almost 10% of our monthly recurring budget and a big hunk of my meager salary. I hope you see the value in my being at that table this morning, and I really do covet your prayers. But more than that, I pray you will help us make up that $250 a month, so I can afford to get up tomorrow and do it all again.

If you want to help us do that, you can choose the monthly giving option on this page and give whatever you can. I hope you will. But whether you do or not, Linda still loses that baby next Wednesday, and somebody has to be there for her.

Love Wins,

Hugh Hollowell
Love Wins Ministries | Executive Director

Dear Friends,

When I met them several years ago, they were homeless. She had delivered five children, all of whom had been taken by the state. He was a crackhead living off her food stamps, who made spending money by turning tricks for the white-collar types that cruise the homeless camps looking for sex.

He has several kids by different women. She has a two pack a day habit. They had a baby together – his family was fostering that kid for the state while they “got things under control”. Then they found out she was pregnant. Again.

Luckily (!) about this time, they were on a city bus that hit a car. As a result, they got a small settlement. They paid a year’s worth of rent on a place infested with fleas & roaches & moved in just in time for her to deliver the baby. The state let her keep this one.

They still had no money, no job. They had food stamps & whatever church they were stringing along for help that week. He was still turning tricks & she was selling her food stamps and WIC allotment. Apparently, the state was impressed by their industry & let them have custody of their other child, who is now three. The last time I was over there, the kid was watching a VHS tape of New Jack City & eating a cold hot dog while a roach ran across his foot.

Last week, I get a phone call the day before I go out of town. He ran off with the neighbor, with whom he has been having an affair. The neighbor is HIV positive. And the lease on the apartment runs out at the end of August.

Her mental health caseworker & I talked to her for hours, encouraging her to file for child support & get a restraining order. She said she will. While I am out of town, he moves back in with her. And why not – it’s almost time to get food stamps again. It’s hard to blame her – the thought of being alone with two kids has her terrified.

Loving these people is not easy for me. It is easy for me to say that they are where they are because of the choices they have made, or their moral failures, or whatever. But if I only love people who are lovable – well, even terrorists do that.

My Evangelical friends complain I don’t talk enough about my faith in these letters. Well, understand that the only thing that keeps me answering the phone when she calls is my belief that she is valuable to the God I profess to believe in. And the only reason I am not filled with total despair for those babies is the assurance found in the ancient prayer that one day it will be “on earth as it is in heaven.”

But until that day comes, I don’t know anything to do but to try my best to love them, even when it is not easy. And to pray really, really hard.

They could use your prayers, too. Truth be told, so could I.

Love Wins. Always.

Hugh Hollowell
Love Wins Ministries | Executive Director

Web: http://lovewins.info
Blog: http://lovewins.info/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/lovewins

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

Dear Friends,

Sure, the Easter bunny has gone away and the crème filled eggs are half-off in stores now, but on the Christian calendar, it’s still Easter – a time of celebrating Resurrection.

Maintaining our ministry of love and presence means having to search hard for Resurrection. You find out your alcoholic friend is now experimenting with heroin. Or you watch someone slide further and further from their community and into despair, or you cry with someone who just lost their food stamps and now they have no idea how they will get the still needed groceries. Sometimes, for those for those society has marginalized, it’s just one long Friday. Sunday, and it’s promise of Resurrection seem unlikely at best, and a taunting myth at worst. Somedays, it gets so bad that to hope in Resurrection at all, you have to hunt for it.

You will you see hints of Resurrection long before you find the thing itself – but only if you are looking for them. The long estranged family that finally takes Fred’s calls, and then send him a ticket to come home. Danny getting out of jail and telling us about his new-found sobriety. The guy who gets the pair of boots you guys paid for, who cries because the increase in income means he can move out of his car and into a rooming house. Hints are out there – but you just have to search for them.

Or take our friends Karen and Steve who, you may remember, were living outside in a tent until Troy and Marti invited them to live with them for a season. Over the last few months there have been hints of what the future could look like – Steve’s new job, the vocational training program that accepted Karen, Steve entering the GED program, the new glasses for Karen so she can see, the opening of a first bank account.

New life, however, is always accompanied with birth pangs. Because nothing they have experienced thus far in life has prepared them for this new life, with bank accounts and leases and a community that cares about them, it hasn’t been smooth sailing – not at all. And more than once, Troy and Marti have wondered if they bit off more than they could chew. And several times they were sure they had.

But this weekend Karen and Steve move into their own apartment – in what Karen says is the nicest place she has ever lived. They’re moving on Saturday, but for them, it’s Easter Sunday, with Resurrection and new life breaking out all over.

They have moved into new places before, and there have been new jobs before. Things aren’t magically better – there will be stumbles and failures and slips and falls, just like before. But this time they will not be alone. This time there will be grace. This time there will be love.  And if Easter tells us anything, it is that Love Wins.

Thank you for all the love and financial support you have given to Karen and Steve thus far. Their struggle is far from over – in some ways it is just beginning. Please continue to pray for them and us. And of course, the only way we are able to walk beside people like Karen and Steve is because of your continued financial support.

Dear Friends,

It occurred to me several years ago that most (all?) of the good things that happen in our lives come about because of our relationships. If you see people who are not getting the results in life they want, it is probably because their relationships do not support the achieving of those results.

Put another way, we believe people who live outside don’t have a housing problem – they have a relationship problem. When there is a power inequality between two groups, the onus for changing that is on the more powerful group. Therefore, the single most effective thing we can do to end homelessness is to build those relationships.

My friend Marti has bought into that. Even though her husband is unemployed and their own stability is far from certain, she comes out on Saturday morning to make friends who have less stuff than she does.  For her, these are real relationships – so when she read in my last email that her friend Karen was living in a tent with her husband, she decided that just would not do.

Which is why on Christmas Day, Karen and Steve moved in with Marti and Troy and their two kids. Because Marti believes that if Karen is her real friend, then she can’t say she follows Jesus while her friend sleeps outside in a tent in 20 degree weather. (You can read the full story here).

Because of their relationship with Marti and Troy, Steve and Karen are now indoors and safe. And when Karen had a heart attack a few weeks ago, she had someone to take her to the emergency room. And after she had surgery to put a stent in, she had a safe and warm place to recuperate. And when her prescriptions totaled over $230 a month, she had people to help her with that. Karen would tell you the only reason she is alive right now is because of Marti and Troy.

Karen and Steve are housed right now, but not stable – long-term they need their own place and a steady job for Steve. Troy and Marti are stable, but barely. He is unemployed, but managing to get a bit of temp work here and there. However, their food budget has now shot up, having these two extra people to feed. So, I am asking for your help.

Troy and Marti need some help with the financial burden of having two extra mouths to feed at a time when their own resources are stretched so thin.

Karen’s medications are running over $200 a month. We are working with the drug companies to hopefully get this reduced, but until that happens, we are committed to seeing she gets her meds.

If you are able to help us cover the food or medical costs, go here and make a one time gift – even if it is only $10 or $15. Just pick “Karen Fund” from the drop down. (To send a check, just put Karen Fund on the memo line.) Of course, your gifts are tax deductible, etc.

And Steve needs work – any kind of work. He has a construction background, but is eager to do almost anything. If you are in the Triangle and you hire people, let me know if you would be willing to talk to him – I personally will vouch for him.

And whether you can give or not, please pray for Karen and Steve and Marti and Troy. After all, they need the prayers and, well, you could probably use the practice.

Love Wins. Always.

Hugh Hollowell

Dear Friends,

Typical non-profit wisdom says to send an end of the year introspective email to your list, telling of all the great things your organization did over the last year. I get that email from ministries and causes I personally support and I swear they are all written from the same template.

Doing it that way, I would tell you the victories of the last year – the new churches we partnered with, the dozens of new volunteers we picked up, the new relationships we added. That email would mention the addition of Saturday morning to our weekend breakfast line-up, the new leaders who have emerged from the ranks of our volunteers, the generosity of the 20 or so regular donors who contribute monthly, so we can budget and buy shoes and food and pay me enough to cover my rent and (most months) my groceries.

But in that email, Karen gets lost. Sure, we helped her get prescriptions filled, and she’s one of dozens for whom we bought shoes. But that email would not, could not, tell you anything about the tent she lives in with her husband since there is no shelter they can both be in and be together. You wouldn’t know that one very cold night after dark I got them blankets and sleeping bags that your money provided. Maybe you read on the blog about her being sexually assaulted, but you wouldn’t have heard about us standing in line together to get her seizure medication filled, or about her crying into my shoulder last week when she came to terms with this being her first homeless Christmas. That stuff just doesn’t fit into your typical Christmas email.

But I am OK with that, because we are not your typical homeless ministry. Three winters into this, I still feel funny calling this a ministry or organization – it is just me and some folks like me trying our best to love very broken people no one else wants to love. Over the last year, some of you have came alongside us, physically and financially, and helped us do that. And we are very grateful. We could not do it without you.

Others might be testing us, feeling us out. I understand that. There are lots of folks out there asking for your time and money, and they have awesome statistics and inspiring stories. They have great letterhead and warm and fuzzy emails and tales of success and overcoming adversity. That’s what they do, and they do it well.

But if you want to learn to love people everyone but Jesus has given up on, if you want to be blessed by people who have nothing to give you, if you want to see love win – well, that’s what we do, and we are pretty much the only ones out here doing it. And we would love to have you along for the ride.

(If you want to get your donation in before the end of the year, do that over here. We have to have it postdated by the 31st for it to count for 2009 – plus it helps us in our budgeting for 2010!)

Love Wins. Always.

Hugh Hollowell