Many helpers for week of caring

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped in many ways to make our church’s hosting of homeless families with children a heartfelt and caring mission during the week of Oct. 29-Nov. 5.

As part of the Greater Portland Family Promise network, our church combined with St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church and the Thornton Heights United Methodist Church to provide overnight housing and evening and morning meals for six adults and eight children.

A special thank you to Deanne Burr for coordinating the entire effort, complicated with our church losing power during the wind storm on Nov. 30. For that Monday evening, the families were transported to the Clark Memorial parsonage in Portland.

For the week of hosting, our church converted the back of the sanctuary, the chapel and both the Sunday School and Nursery rooms into bedrooms.

The week began on Sunday afternoon with a team of volunteers setting up the bedrooms before the families arrived for the first time at 4 p.m.

Throughout the week, volunteers prepared dinners at their homes and brought them to church, spent quality time with the families in the evenings, slept overnight at the church to insure safety and well-being, and provided the families with breakfasts and lunches to go. The families were transported to the Family Promise Day Center in Portland after breakfast from where some of the adults went to jobs and some children went to school.

On Saturday morning, with more time available before the families returned to the Day Center, a hot breakfast of egg sandwiches, juice, and coffee was prepared.

The week ended on Sunday morning with the families leaving at 7 a.m. and another team of volunteers quickly transformed the bedrooms back to their original state for church services at 8 and 10 a.m. More volunteers took all the bed linens and towels to their homes for washing.

The church’s next scheduled week of hosting is Jan. 28-Feb. 4, 2018.

For more information on the Family Promise program, click here: Family Promise