Our church has a lot of Outreach programs. We have a prison ministry, we help supply items for Grace Works - a store where people can go get all kinds of things for their homes - we are in the middle of helping house homeless men one night a week from now till the end of March. We furnish their dinner, let them take a hot shower and do some laundry if they need to, feed them breakfast and pack a good lunch for them before we take them back to Nashville. But one of my favorite programs we are involved in is called Building Lives. It is a house where homeless Veterans are helped get off the streets and find work and also help with problems they have.
At this point there are 22 men housed there. This is just a drop in the bucket of homeless Veterans in Nashville. Sunday we were told there are between 450 and 500 homeless veterans in town.
One of the ways this home is financed is through a yearly Warehouse Sale. The director goes to businesses and they donate items to him, he gets this old warehouse somehow and each December for 10 days there is a sale. Things are really cheap. People wait every year to come Christmas shop.
Wrapping paper is $1 a roll, many items are $2, some are $3, and one group is 4 items for $5. These are all new items.
Today I helped with this sale. I have wanted to help with this for several years but we were never home. I got there about 8:45 and was to work from 9 to 1. Lunch was served us and at 1 p.m. we were to have replacements come.
BUT...some of them didn't show up. One couple was there when I arrived and were still there when I left at 2. I took the opportunity to do a little shopping before I left. Not so much for Christmas gifts but things for the house I saw that were things I needed and were dirt cheap.
It was a rewarding day knowing all the proceeds of this day would go to help the homeless Veterans and other people in the Nashville area that need some help. I tried to watch the news but have to admit I slept through most of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment