Walking directions from Center City Park to West Market Street United Methodist Church:

*Awaken Church members will also serve their regularly scheduled breakfast at the usual time and location on Sunday morning the 25th, which is Christmas Day.

On the menu: turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, green beans, cranberry sauce and a dinner roll.

Shuttles will provide transportation for dinner guests. Shuttles will run every 15 minutes, picking up from the Interactive Resource Center, Greensboro Urban Ministry and Center City Park, beginning at 10:45am and ending at 2:45pm. The last shuttle will return guests to those locations at 3:15pm.

Anna Freiberg, co-owner of Bender’s Tavern, is continuing a tradition started by her parents in 1981. They owned the original Ham’s on Friendly Avenue, now closed, which previously served the annual Christmas meal.

Frieberg has plenty of volunteers lined up for the Christmas meal, but if you’d like to help, here are some other ways to be involved:

• Make a financial donation through the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. (Write a check or give securely online.)
• Donate an item to be given to a dinner guest on Christmas Day. Items needed: new, unused toiletries; new or gently used hats, gloves, scarves and toys. Please bring your donation to Bender’s Tavern.

But there’s the unspoken: mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, trauma, family dysfunction. Obtaining or maintaining a job or housing is difficult (and out of reach for some). A number of folks I’ve seen just this week are newly released from jail or prison. Their chances for jobs and housing seem to rise and fall with the economy.

I think of the words a homeless friend once said to me, “If we could get a job, we’d have one.” And another, referencing Greensboro’s wealth of free meal sites and dearth of affordable housing, “We appreciate the food. But you can’t cover up with a chicken wing.” True word.

>> Related post: “Urgent needs for our ministry to unsheltered homeless people: Please help!”

>> Read about all of GCC’s outreach ministries here.

Breakfast guests: Please use the entrance on Friendly Avenue. There will be greeters there to assist you.

» Related: A list of free meals in Greensboro

In an effort to serve more homeless and hungry people, the group eventually moved to a stationary location in downtown Greensboro, and now, as Greensboro Burrito Bikers nears its one-year anniversary, Holderness and a team of volunteers are feeding 40-50 people on Saturday mornings at 8:00 a.m. on the sidewalk outside of Center City Park at the intersection of Friendly Avenue and Davie Street.  (Update from Hayes: Burrito Bikers fed 65+ people on Saturday, October 23rd!)

Holderness was inspired to begin this feeding ministry after riding along with his brother Tommy’s Burrito Bikers group in Charlotte. After his niece rode with the Greensboro group this past winter, she started a Burrito Bikers group in Chapel Hill, and they’re already making news (here and here).

As Greensboro Burrito Bikers continues to grow and serve more homeless people, they welcome and need volunteers and donors.

Volunteer opportunities include:

• Making breakfast burritos (can be made during the week and frozen)
• Coming out on Saturday mornings to serve and spend time with homeless and hungry breakfast guests

Donate breakfast items:

• Breakfast burritos (or other filling main item, such as breakfast sandwiches/biscuits with eggs and/or meat)
• Bottled water
• Coffee, cups, sugar, creamer
• Bananas
• Snack crackers
• Financial donations (costs about $50 to serve 40 people)

To learn more about Greensboro Burrito Bikers, and how to volunteer and donate, visit their web site and join them on Facebook.

Update — Photos I took when I hung out with Burrito Bikers on 08/28/2010:

» continue reading Study: Fewer low-income kids getting summer school meals – CNN.com

Hello:

My name is David. I am 69 years old ( I have a hip replacement) and I can’t do very much! I attend Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, Calif. I hope you will read this e-mail. I thought it might be of some interest to you. It shows what the Lord can do if we listen to him and then follow what he has to say!

My wife and I belong to what we call the “Red Wagon.” The “Red Wagon” is just a name for our church group that feeds the homeless on Mondays and Thursdays. We feed aproximately 225 homeless people every week!

Over the years, I have prayed for something I could do for the church. I can’t carry a tune, can’t teach, etc. Well, finally the Lord spoke to me! As I was wrapping the forks and spoons into the napkins (Our health Dept. requires us to do this! ) the Lord told me that we are feeding the homeless food so why not give them a Bible Verse to take with them, more food!

Well, I finally found something I can do! I print out aprox. 225 Bible Verses each week, 25 Verses, then change to a new verse! I hand write them, using a colored marking pen. Only three colors. Red (Title I make up ) Blue ( The Verse ) Black ( Where found in the Bible ) I print them on my home printer ( Copier ). I get two on each sheet of 8.5×11 inch standard paper. I cut them in half and wrap one in each napkin with the fork and spoon.

I have been doing this for about six months and so far, no one has thrown them away! One lady found hers. She had accidently thrown it away with her napkin. She says she saves all of them! This is something simple that anyone can do. Maybe you know someone that wants to serve the Lord and doesn’t know what to do.

By taking the first step which was joing the ” Red Wagon,” the Lord showed me what I can do! I AM REALLY BLESSED!!!
Thanks for reading this e-mail. I hope you enjoyed it!

God bless You!

I love this idea! Thank you, David.

I called the church, but our congregational nurse is on vacation. I emailed a contact at HealthServe, hoping he’d been there, but haven’t heard back yet. I’m not even sure if they can tell me, because of privacy laws. I’m hoping they were able to help him get his meds. I can’t imagine sleeping under a bridge after having major surgery.

Later, I went on over to the HIVE and cooked dinner with the Food Not Bombs folks. As I was leaving to go meet friends at Ganache, I got a call from one of the downtown cops, who wanted to know if we had any food left. He was with a hungry homeless man who’d just been released from jail, and he wanted to know if I could bring him something to eat. So Tim filled a grocery bag with containers of rice, gumbo, bread and fruit, and added utensils, napkins and bottled water. I went downtown and met them, and gave the man the bag of food. He was so thankful to receive it. I talked to him about where to go to get some other things that he needed, and then I went on to meet my friends.

Later in the evening, the downtown cops encountered another homeless man, who’d just been discharged from the hospital. He was from out of town and had no money and nowhere to go. So I tried to help them find a place for him to sleep. First, I called Greensboro Urban Ministry and explained the situation. But all their beds were full. Then I called the Salvation Army. No bed for him there, either. There are no other emergency shelter options for homeless men in Greensboro.

I talked to him for a little while and found out that he’d come to Greensboro from out of state, looking for work. And I told him, quite honestly, that he’d probably picked the wrong place to look. The lack of work has been a central topic of discussion for a while lately among my homeless friends, and we’d been talking about it earlier in the day, on the block and at the HIVE. Jobs — even temp work — are few and far between. The man said he’d probably try to go back where he came from.

I told him that there were no shelter beds available and that I didn’t have any other options for him to sleep inside, but I knew of a place he could sleep outside that would be comparatively safe. It was a ways away from where we were, so a patrol officer came by to give him a ride, and we asked him to drive by the places that serve breakfast and lunch, which were on the way, so that the man would know where he could eat in the morning. He asked for a blanket, and I didn’t have one. I carry them in my truck once it starts getting cold at night, and I hadn’t realized that the chilly nights are already here. I told him I could get him one tomorrow, knowing as I said it, how inadequate that was. He said he hoped to be gone by tomorrow. And then he got in the police car and they pulled away.

One of the remaining officers looked at me and said, “I feel like we just failed him. As a city, that we failed him.” Yeah, me too.

Hospitals discharge people to the street. Jails discharge people to the street. Part of our ten year plan to end homelessness is supposed to include discharge planning to prevent people from being sent from a hospital or jail to the street. But if the shelters are full and there’s no other housing, then what do you do? Hospitals and jails are not housing providers. Shelters only have so many beds. Cops shouldn’t have to be social workers. I don’t know what the answer is. I just know that I agree with my cop friend. I feel like we failed that guy. And we failed the guy who had surgery and got sent back under a bridge without his medicine. And there are so many more like them…

Urban Ministry serves homeless breakfast

Your article, “Discovering a need, blogger takes action” (A1, Aug. 14), contained incorrect information. It stated, “Hospitality House is the only place in the city that serves breakfast to the homeless.”

I have the opportunity to serve breakfast every Thursday morning at Greensboro Urban Ministry, where between 70 and 150 homeless people are served each morning. These breakfasts are prepared and served by members of First Lutheran Church, Lutheran Church of Our Father, the Episcopal Churches of Greensboro and others.

Each church/organization is responsible for one morning a week. Volunteers arrive at 6 a.m., cook, serve, clean and provide an uplifting message for the guests.

The opportunities in Greensboro to help those in need are endless. Let’s all do our part to show we care.

Susan Wilson
Greensboro

My response:

A follow-up article the next day stated:

“The nonprofit [Hospitality House] is the only place in the city that provides breakfast to people who are hungry every weekday except Wednesday, when the Greensboro Urban Ministry has a community breakfast. Urban Ministry otherwise serves breakfast only to those who stay overnight at the Weaver House.”

The letter writer, Ms. Wilson, serves breakfast for Weaver House residents. The Hospitality House serves unsheltered homeless people and other hungry people. Both are needed and appreciated.

We have also learned that St. Paul Baptist Church serves breakfast on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. That location is a little over a mile southeast of the downtown area. (Glenwood Presbyterian and Nu Life Church serve breakfast on Saturdays. As far as we know, no one is currently serving breakfast on Sundays.)

The letter writer is correct that the opportunities are endless, because the need here is great. There are many homeless and hungry people in Greensboro. We have more homeless people than we have space in homeless shelters.

We are blessed to have people like Miss Terry at the Hospitality House who daily feed and serve those who would otherwise go without. Those of us who volunteered last week got a glimpse of how much work Miss Terry does, and we are even more appreciative now of her efforts to love and serve our friends.

Cara Michele

We served at least 100 for breakfast on Thursday and 150 for breakfast on Friday, and 150+ at Friday’s dinner. We served a different group of homeless folks than Greensboro Urban Ministry. There are a lot of homeless people in Greensboro. Many more than most people realize. And we still didn’t serve them all.