THE REFUGE HOMELESS CHURCH MINISTRY

Every Sunday I serve at the Refuge homeless shelter for about 5 hours.
It's a long drive for me because of where I live, but it's well worth the trip just to spend time with my homeless friends.
The Refuge is what we call a Church without walls for the homeless.

You see the homeless don't feel accepted at a reguler Church, so some of my friends and I bring Church to them as you can see from the pictures below.



It's something my homeless friends tell me is a blessing to them because at the Refuge they feel accepted and they now have a Church they can call their own.

I will tell you that it's not easy to do this, it's all done outdoors and it gets very hot sometimes. Take for example today, it was 95 degrees out and there was no wind.

On average there are about 10,000 homeless people in the county I live in.
But not all of the homeless come for the Church service and that's okay. And yes of course we feed them after the Church service.



I am one of the associate Pastors there and I also teach a Bible study there after the feeding and I have seen about 55 of my homeless friends Graduate the Bible study program I teach.

Now this is huge because it gives my friends there a glimer of hope that if they can do that they can also kick their personal habits with GOD'S help that keep them from His best in their lives.

Just to give you the reader a little background on that, The Bible study is an eight week course and after they attened all eight weeks they graduate and I give them a certificate of completion.

I will tell you that it brings such joy into my heart to see my friends get off the mean streets and back on their feet with jobs and a place of their own! And yes that has happend already with 6 of my friends there...yay for them!

I can't even begin to put into type how good it makes my friends feel when they complete the course.

At the Refuge we do something special for our homeless friends that come out every last Sunday of the month.

On the last Sunday of the month at the Refuge we have a time of Communion,






And after the Church service we then give out clothes to our homeless friends that are in need.






It's always a blessing to me to see my friends get some of life's basic neccesities that I so often take for granted.

And it helps me get to know my homeless friends a little bit better too.

I encourage you the reader of this blog that if you never gave up any of your time to serve the homeless at a shelter before you should try it.

Most of the homeless shelters I have visited always need a helping hand on any given day of the week.

Even if it's just once, you never know what it may mean to someone else and even you for that matter.

I believe that it's easy to tell someone you love them, but until you show them you "care" they wont know how much you really love them!

I like to always say "One life at a time"

Here's a couple of new pics of the Refuge ministry.





This is a slide show I put together to give you a better idea of the ministry.


I humble myself at this time and ask for your prayers for me, the team of volunteers, and this ministry in general.

I thank you all in advance for all your prayers. I really appreciate them all more then I can even begin to express.

Love, Robert...(^_^)