Doing Something: Reaching out to the Homeless (2)

There has been a breakthrough recently in regard to reaching out to the homeless. Not something initiated by our own church, sadly, but another church has started a regular soup run on a Friday night. Our church has agreed to work in partnership with them and P. has gone out on a Friday night on several occasions with a team of young men that changes each week. Now that he is familiar with the routine he intends to take other people from our church with him in the future. Not only has P. been able to help with the giving out of soup but he has been able to pass on donations of food for the church to use in preparing the meals and more recently, blankets.

The Salvation Army received a massive donation of brand new blankets to be given out to the homeless, particularly needed in the winter months. Our own church was given 40 blankets to distribute and P. took some of them with him the last time he helped with the soup run. As he had permission from the men to take publicity photos I feel I can share them with you here (see side bar). You will notice from the photos that some of the men have large wooden carts with them. These are used to collect cardboard. P. learnt that they can sell 1kg of cardboard for 30 centavos (that is about 10p). How much cardboard do they need to collect in order to buy a loaf of bread which is about R$ 4,00 (about £1.45)? No wonder I see these men walking up and down the street throughout the day - they seem to be the hardest working men in Sao Miguel.

P. had more success in giving out the blankets than I did. I saw the lady with the blanket (see previous blog) walking along the street opposite our church hall so I quickly grabbed a blanket and crossed the street to give it to her. Her own blanket was grey and dirty and I was holding a brand, new, clean pink blanket. She had stopped to beg food from the bar opposite our church and when I offered her the blanket she refused it. I asked the young girl from the bar to explain to her in portuguese that the blanket was a gift and I wanted her to take it and I left the blanket with her. I don't think she managed to give her the blanket either and of course, she did not return it to the church. In fact, later that evening while I was giving out Rumos ( the Brazilian War Cry) in the street, the owner of the bar came and asked if I had any more blankets. I explained that the blankets were only to be given to the homeless and he said that he would, indeed, be giving them to the homeless! I found it very difficult to believe him and said that The Salvation Army would be distributing the blankets and I could not give any to him. I then took the opportunity to invite him to our meetings but he began to wander across the road back to his bar.

We are so pleased that a neighbouring church has begun this soup run because it gives us a stronger link with the homeless on the street. We have plans to develop this work further but we know we will need to do alot of planning before we can put it into action. In the meantime, we will continue to support the work of the Friday night soup run and pray that God will open more doors of opportunity for us.