Day 7 - Baby Clothes, Retirement & God's GPS

Another early morning. After meeting in the foyer at 7:20, we ran through what the plan was for the day, split into vans and headed to the Union Gospel Mission. Our contact was a bit late, but we didn't mind. Sitting in the chapel while fellowshipping was a great way to reunite. After about half an hour or so, our contact, Mallory arrived.

She took us to orientation and we watched a video about the place. The mission was opened in the late 1800's and different from the other missions in the fact that they tried to keep the families together. They not only housed the people, fed them; they also taught them how to apply for jobs, resumes and cover sheets. They housed roughly 300 people, broken to three main categories... women's, men's and families. It was cool because though the men weren't allowed to stay with the women and children, they were allowed to stay on the premises to see thier families, and eat lunch with them. ..a service a lot of shelters don't do.

 The place was beautiful too, not what you'd imagine. It was more like a retirement home. After a quick tour of some of the different facilities, we  went to the warehouse. Unlike other "thrift stores" this facility only sold to the general public once a week. Everything else is saved for the residents.

  

The furniture and other household items were saved for when the people were back on thier feet and with thier own place. Once we were in, our job was to sort the donations. Everything from baby cl othes to hats, to cool 80's gear and blankets, we sorted it all. When we had finished several bags of donations, we headed out to lunch.

  

 We had CiCi's underneath the shadow of the Cowboys stadium (I know, Bronco fans, I know) and then started off to our next destination...Buckner's children. So we headed out and ended up at a recycling plant. We looked up the address now on someone else's GPS, which led to a random church. Now three of us pulled out our GPS'. Where is this place? It took to an address with an empty lot.  ??? So we tried to go the  other way down the street. No luck. Finally David gets out of the car to ask directions. They tell us to keep going. We do, actually for twenty minutes and still didn't find anything. Meanwhile, Steph is calling the home every few minutes, trying to get a hold of someone. This venue was just not supposed to happen.

So we went to Starbucks to reconviene (and we MAY be addicted) before heading out to The Buckner Retirement Village. We talked that perhaps we weren't supposed to be there for that day. There had been some joking that went too far; perhaps we wouldn't have conveyed the message like we could have in that spirit.

The people were super friendly. While the crew set up, the mimes quickly changed and went to mingle as the residents came in. It's always so cool to see how different people react.  Some sit quietly, some nodded thier heads in affirmation, other sit teary-eyed and others still whisper quietly. But all said they loved it and slowly went to dinner as we quickly tore down.

We would be serving the dinner that night...pizza & salad (Bill was somehow guessing that those weren't normal menu items :) But the residents didnt' mind. after we served them, we served ourselves and went to mix with them as we ate.  It was great to see all the smiles and all the connections. 

 

Steph met a man named Charles who was 83. The man had several stories of  WWII, work and the home. The man had lost his wife, family, and nearly himself. It was hard and he didn't know why everyone was gone and he was still there, but he knew it was a reason. I think both of them needed to just sit and talk. What a blessing for both.