I wasn’t surprised to learn that there’s a homeless refugee in Greensboro. But I am surprised to hear that he’s the first.
image credit: Nelson Kepley, News-Record.com
Read more on From refugee to homeless: The first of how many?…
Urban Ministry estimated it served 4,000 meals Thursday.
Sam Wood appreciates the warm food and kindness of the volunteers.
He has held retail and odd jobs his whole working life, but when he lost his last job and got divorced, he found himself on the streets for nearly two years.
Read more on The importance of a good sleeping bag…
Sights and sounds from the 2009 Feast of Caring, including a prayer from the rabbi of Temple Emanuel.
“Let us realize that as long as there are poor in our community, as long as there are poor, then there truly is a lack of justice.”
– Rabbi Fred Guttman
Read more on Feast of Caring: Sights & sounds, soup & supplication…
Jeri Rowe writes about Roscoe, a homeless man I first met at a Wednesday night dinner at Grace Community Church, years ago.
undated family photo of Roscoe; published in N&R
He was 17 when he was drafted into the Army and given a parachute and a gun to fight the enemy in Southeast Asia.
He earned a Purple Heart for the two bullets lodged just beneath his scalp. He also got lost in the jungle for 27 days , living on bugs, tree bark and snakes he killed and ate raw.
He saw his buddies torn apart by bullets and watched young children offer his fellow soldiers shoeboxes purported to be gifts. The shoeboxes contained live grenades.
Davis could never shake those memories.
Wow, I never knew this about Roscoe. The purple heart, the war memories. There’s a lot I didn’t know about Roscoe.
Read more on I never knew that Roscoe had a purple heart…
Rhinos Around the World… and the homeless camp
Originally uploaded by caramichele
This made me smile. 
Our most recent needs list for our StreetWatch homeless street outreach ministry. We tell the people we see that if they need something we don’t have on the truck or van, we’ll write it down and post it, and if it gets donated, we’ll bring it to them. All of these people live outside in Greensboro. Can you help?
Read more on StreetWatch: Current needs, 11/16/2009…
One night a year or so ago, I was at my church, getting things out of the kitchen for street outreach, and half-listening to the mostly incoherent mutterings of my friend, Al — a homeless schizophrenic. His face this night was wrinkled and troubled, his thoughts jumbled, his eyes unfocused. I finished up what I was doing, told Al I’d see him later, and then headed for the door. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there. But then, his voice stopped me:
Read more on Down by the riverside…
Ben Holder hasn’t been blogging as much recently, and I’m happy about it. Because I know why he’s been away from The Troublemaker. In his own words:
“I’m too busy to blog. I’m renovating houses, putting unemployed people to work, and feeding homeless people in my kitchen.”
Read more on Why I’m happy that Ben Holder’s not blogging…
I wrote about the guys on the block (and more) for the News & Record: “When there’s nowhere to go,” by Michele Forrest; published Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009. It’s online here, and reposted below:
On the block. Image credit: Michele Forrest / ChosenFast.com
My ministry partner, Audrie Keen, and I provide a street outreach to the homeless in Greensboro, and we’ve made a lot of friends along the way. We eat together, go to church together and have cookouts. Sometimes our homeless friends stay with us. We visit formerly homeless friends in their homes.
When we say “homeless friends,” we really mean friends.
Two Friday mornings ago, we visited “The Block” at Lee and South Eugene streets. It had been 11 days since my last visit, when we’d talked about the artistic bench installed, then removed, from along the new stretch of the Downtown Greenway in that area. Neighbors said the bench attracted drug addicts and prostitutes.
The guys on The Block dismissed that notion. One said: “The problem is not as serious as they say it is on the news. And the bench has nothing to do with it.”
Read more on When there’s nowhere to go…
