‘WE ARE BLESSED TO BLESS OTHERS’
Church, volunteers provide food, showers and helping hands for Houston’s homeless
Craig Stewart is a sushi chef who spent Thanksgiving serving turkey under a Houston bridge.
It was not in any way what he’d expected to be doing six months ago.
Then the stroke happened. It briefly paralyzed him from the neck down, he said, and months of medical bills eventually drained his finances and kick started a monthslong battle with homelessness, unemployment and hopelessness.
On Saturday, he and hundreds of others were given a brief reprieve from the daily horrors of homelessness, when local churches and nonprofits partnered to provide hot meals, showers and hair cuts.
It was the fifth year of the “Hope For Houston” event hosted by New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. This year, however, New Hope partnered with Remnant Church to secure mobile showers through an Austin-based group that focuses on disaster assistance.
“I believe that we are blessed to bless others,” said Pastor Darrel Boson. “God mandates it.”
It was precisely the message Walter Jones needed to hear.
The 53-year-old came from a “broken home” and, after dropping out of school, said he developed a drug habit and criminal record. He wants to get off the streets, he said, but it’s difficult to find work when potential employers see a criminal, rather than a human being.
He appreciated the fried fish and music that Boson’s church provided. But more than anything, he said, it renewed his dignity.
“This gives me a sense of hope,” Jones said. “It makes me feel like there’s someone who care for me.”
Others were happy for a hot meal in a safe place.
Charles Williams, 58, said each of his days
are about one thing, and one thing only: Survival.
And surviving brings with it temptations, he said, including the crime and drugs that he said are endemic in homeless communities, but that he’s avoided since losing his construction job more than a year ago.
Even brief moments of community, he said, help him remember not to stray. “It just helps the days go by,” he said.
Yet they know that the hot meals and showers are temporary, and that soon, it’ll be business as usual on the streets.
It’s a sentiment often shared by homeless people who, each holiday season, see a brief influx of charity that seems to disappear after New Years.
“This gives me a sense of hope. It makes me feel like there’s someone who care for me.” Walter Jones, 53, who struggles to find work because of a criminal record
Stewart, the 48-year-old sushi chef, said there was so much donated food at his shelter this week that he and others took leftover plates of turkey to a nearby homeless encampment.
“I’m full,” he told people as he offered up plates.
“So are we,” he said some responded.
Still, he said, he is grateful. When he was evicted from his apartment months ago, he said, it felt like a death sentence.
“I won’t survive,” he recalls telling his now-former landlord. “You’ll see me on the news, dead.”
He’s doing better now, having secured help through a local shelter. But he faces no shortage of obstacles to housing and employment. A few months ago, for example, his wallet was stolen and, with it, all official documentation that he’d need to apply for jobs or assistance.
“I wasn’t eating. I’ve been depressed,” he said. “It’s hard. I just want to get back on my feet. I never thought this would happen to me.”
Boson, meanwhile, said he wants to continue expanding his church’s outreach, and hopes to develop a pilot program that provides hot showers to homeless people as often as possible.
Doing so, he hopes, will help not only those who are homeless, but those who view them as something less desirable.
“People are not homeless by choice,” he said. “And they’re received among each other because they smell and live like each other. They’re only judged when they come out of those communities.” “These are God’s children, just like we are,” he added.