Before we can help poor and homeless people, we needed to learn to see them. Learning to see the poor and the homeless was the topic of a previous post.
After we started seeing poor and homeless people everywhere, we weren’t sure how to help them.
Start in Small Ways
We started helping in small ways. We want to help people, not make their lives worse by enabling them to remain in poverty or on the street.
How could we do that?
Since I had prepared lunch for the homeless, I contacted the directors of that program and offered to prepare lunch again. My wife helped me prepare and share lunch in the park and dinner in the local homeless shelter several times in the years that followed.
I also met with the people who directed other local homeless programs. They advised how they thought we could best help the homeless in our community, and also gave us advice about working with the homeless. Later in this series I will mention some of that advice.
When we shared lunch and dinner, we spent time talking to and getting to know those with whom we shared. We began building friendships and learned from our new friends what they needed most.
Food, Clothes, and More
We began a program in our church at Christmas. Following an annual church dinner that took place the first Sunday of December, we provided numerous opportunities for our congregation to provide needed items for the homeless, battered women and children, poor Native Americans who lived on the reservation, and poor in our community.
Although some people in the church had no interest in helping the poor and homeless, most wanted to help. Each Christmas we gathered a large quantity of mostly new clothing, toys, and other items and distributed them.
By accident I discovered that a family we knew had run out of money and food. Since I cooked dinner for the church once a week, I always had extra food.
Over the following months I gave them a case of steak, lots and lots of cranberry salad, and a variety of other food items. Once they got back on their feet they laughed and told me “We were embarrassed to tell anyone we were broke, but every night we had steak for dinner.”
During the following years we shared food with various families whose cupboards were literally bare.
When we began paying attention to the people in our community, we not only began seeing the poor and homeless, but we also began building relationships with them and began finding ways that we could come alongside them in their hour of need.
How Can We Help 10,000 People?
Eventually our jobs led us to San Diego, where there are many poor and homeless, far more than there were in any place we had previously lived. Based on the annual homeless count, a day when teams attempt to count every homeless person in the city (an impossible task), most homeless organizations here believe that over 10,000 homeless people live in our city.
How can we begin to help 10,000 homeless people and many more poor people in a large city? Crawling into a warm bed, pulling the covers under our chins and trying to forget about people sleeping on sidewalks, under bridges, and even under bushes on cold nights would be so easy.
What can we do? How can we help 10,000 homeless people?
In the remaining posts in this series, we will answer that question as well as look at some of the things we do to help the homeless and poor, which will hopefully give you some ideas of ways in which you can help the poor and homeless where you live.
There is so much need in the world!
And YOU can help.
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We are in the beginning process of filming a movie about helping the homeless in San Diego. Our goal is to get enough people involved to help 10,000 homeless people. I would very much like to talk to you if you would like to be involved.
Amen this blessed me because of its thruth
If you sincerely want to help all of the poor people in this world of woes, please contact me. Thank you.
yes I truly want to help the poor but are you going to send me to a company that helps poor people but then takes 2% of the money that I am sending for poor people if this is the type of company than I would not want do this but plz send me información thanks in God bless
People want to know that most of the money or goods that they donate to help the poor actually reach the poor in the form of goods, services and money. However, that is not always easy to determine. While many organizations necessarily do have some overhead expenses, the best ones are very good at getting much of what is donated into the hands of those who need it most.
If possible consider donating to local organizations. Ask them to account for what they do with your donations, and ask those who work with the poor which organizations in your area have low expenses and therefore can funnel most of the donations to those for whom it is intended.
I wanna help
I want to help the homeless. I have this thinking: why wait around for a miracle when you can be one? I want to help!
thanks for good statages
thanks for also joining with other people to help th poor people
I have to relate a story that this made me remember and smile. My small church in the suburbs is known for helping the poor and homeless, we provide 500 meals a month, help at the shelters, and list could go on. One Christmas a good friend of mine decided she wanted to ask people to donate coats and she would take them to Chicago and hand them out on lower Wacker Drive on Christmas Eve. Of course the demand was greater than the supply and as she was telling these people she had no more, a woman came up to her and LP took off her coat and gave it to the woman. Later LP told me,” when I looked in her eyes I saw my mother.” If we all looked into the eyes of the homeless what would we see?
People. Real people. They might even be our mother. So few actually look at the homeless, especially in their eyes. Maybe it’s easier to sort of pretend they’re not there if we avoid eye contact.
What a Blessing God has given us in this ministry .Here we can see and reflect how Jesus treats us and cares for us and He allows us to reproduce His works .I personally love this ministry and personally was homeless when someone shared the Love I needed I current volunteer at a homeless shelter every Monday and cut hair(I’m a Barber ) I also enjoy finding hungry people and feeding them .well enough about me get out and try it .Blessings to y’all always David.
One of the most beautiful encounters of redeeming love I ever experienced was in the arms of a homeless man. I had just lost my wife and moved to a new city and was having a coffee outside. A homeless person came sat down beside me at another table. I asked him to join me. He did and I asked him if he grew up in the city and he said no my mom just died and I was living with her and without her income, I could not stay there and decided to come here as it is a little less rough than where I came from. It seemed so natural as we stood to say goodbye to embrace we did and it could only be described as an angel from heaven appeared. I am 72 he wasn’t much younger. I have started just now a new nonprofit helping to reintegrate the homeless and help them to realize that I need their help
Thanks for the information. Now I know how to help the poor and needy.