What’s it feel like… to be mandatorily evacuated from your temporary residence for the third time in six months?
What’s it feel like… to be a mother of young children who has experienced homelessness, found a haven of safety at Hope Gardens, then are told you need to evacuate with two bags and relocate to skid row and sleep on a gym floor?
There are people all around you… The lights don’t go out… the kids don’t want to sit still… the air has a stale stench, there’s a sound of continuous noise in your ears… What’s it feel like to be evacuated from your temporary shelter?
Well it feels a whole lot better when there is an air mattress between you and the floor. Let’s start there!
Thanks to Deed and Truth we had enough air mattresses for every family and we even had enough financial support to purchase a stock of extras so that next time we won’t have to travel to 17 different stores to locate them in the rain.
What’s it feel like? Betty and I encouraged the staff to make this evacuation a connection adventure… a unique opportunity to live and sleep alongside the families to make loving connections.
What if God sends storms for us to feel loved and connected instead of displaced?
What does it feel like for senior ladies who have no family to care for them when they are displaced from their home at Hope Gardens?
What if it could feel like loving connection because some people they don’t even know sent the finances to stay at a hotel in Pasadena and go out to dinner at Denny’s with the pastor!
Thanks to Deed and Truth a new procedure for evacuations has been set… no longer do the senior ladies sleep on the floor in a gym on skid row… they stay with one other friend in a hotel room in Pasadena.
Thank you for your financial and prayer support that turned a time that could have been characterized by fear, uncertainty, confusion, and discomfort into a time of loving connection.
I’m happy to say we are back to Hope Gardens. It’s in the same condition as when we left (just wetter and greener)… but the guests are not the same as when they left… they feel a deeper sense of loving connection!
Your responses became the tools God himself used to use adversity for our advantage by bringing a calm in the middle of a storm!
–Pastor Dan