By Bill Miller | Director of Development Ministry
During Thanksgiving and Christmas, we provide special meals for our homeless guests at our Burnside Shelter (111 West Burnside, Portland, Ore.). That's in addition to our daily breakfast and dinner services. Our staff and volunteers encourage dinner guests to linger for conversation. The dining room is expanded to seat more people and holiday decorations make it as festive as possible.
Last year, one of our winter guests was Jim. He came to us looking for a place to get a safe night’s sleep. He’d just taken the bus from Seattle to Portland and got robbed the day he got in town. “I lost everything I had except my beer,” he recalls. “I didn’t know anyone here and didn’t know where to go.” Jim’s life was a mess. A wrecked marriage. Lost custody of his son. His brother was killed in an accident. He’d spent 3 ½ years in prison.
“I hated myself, and I hated life. I blamed God for my mess, and I was angry.” Drinking led to drugs. It was a vicious cycle with dead-ends everywhere. “I’d wake up each morning and all I’d want to do was crawl inside another bottle… and I did,” Jim says. "I found myself standing outside the Mission, not really knowing what was available inside. I believe it was God who reached out and said ‘This is where you’re supposed to be.’ I really can’t describe it anyway other than that.”
Fortunately, Jim was clear-headed enough to know he wasn’t hallucinating. “I sat down with one of the chaplains, and he invited me into the recovery program. I struggled with that decision, but figured I had nothing to lose. And I really wanted a place to sleep that night!” That was a new beginning for Jim. Today, he’s graduated from our New Life Recovery Ministry, is working full-time, going back to school, and training to mentor new believers in their Christian faith. “I’m on the way to being more whole because I have God in my life. I don’t have to carry all of life’s pain and baggage by myself. I can trust Him and others to make it through it.”
A holiday meal often is our first connection with hurting men, women and children. Shelter and food are just the first step in our efforts to break the destructive cycle of homelessness, poverty and despair.
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