SafeHouse

So today is the 28th of April. Not a famous 29th, unfortunately. I've decided that if special things won't just happen on 29ths, then I will make them happen. But that is beside the point. Which was... to tell you about this Friday. There is no real way I could tell you everything that happened- you would have had to be there. Still, I'll try my durndest. =)
This weekend a small band from our youth group set out on a trip to the heart of Atlanta. We went to visit a place called SafeHouse. Our original plan was to volunteer for en evening, but we ended up just going there and sort of- well, observing for a few hours. We saw the whole facility, and the man who was working there that evening showed us all of the ministries that they have. It's really an amazing place. Their motto and goal is to "give people a hand up, not a handout." Which is very admirable, really. Talking with D you could really tell that he is passionate about this ministry. They help people to get cleaned up (in all senses of the word) if they want it, they facilitate ways for people to write resumés, make phone calls, acquire paperwork; they mentor kids whose parent(s) are in prison; they teach people (volunteers) what it is like to be homeless; they also have a church service and serve a meal every evening, with the help of volunteer organizations from the area. Our little group got to sit in on the service that night and help pass out the dinner and clean up the parking lot. What was amazing to me about this trip was the difference of these people from the people that I usually meet around here. They were scruffy, they were dirty, they were not in a hurry (which I truly enjoyed. ;) ); you could really tell that they had fallen on/gotten into hard times. Most of them were African American guys in their 30s and up, but there were some whites and just a few women. Apparently certain cities have different concentrations of homeless demographics. One city has homeless white teens (Detroit? Chicago?), another has older women, etc. Despite all their differences however, these people were resoundingly people. What I mean by that is that they were a different sort of people from the ones that usually surround me. And that was good. I really wanted to have the chance to get to know these people, to work with them and understand their lifestyle- and how to get them out of it into a better one, if they so chose.
over'n'out