12-17-23
This was one of the coolest outreach days we’ve had so far- and I’ll tell you why.
We just recently had an outreach day so we were planning on waiting until January for the next one to give our volunteers a break. Someone, a guy named Will, from The Brook contacted me, letting me know that their Simple Church wanted to do an end-of-year homeless outreach, but since most of them had never done something like that before, asked if Neighbors could join forces with them. Although it had just happened the weekend before, we ended up getting 16 volunteers to come.
Reason #1 it was cool: the date that Will’s group had already set to do this outreach was December 17th. Unknowingly, they had scheduled it for the one year anniversary of the very first time the group that has now become Neighbors did outreach, December 17th, 2022.
Reason #2 it was cool: our outreach is solely possible by the donations of generous people in our community, and this group had gathered a couple thousand dollars for this day, which meant that we were able to give out buckets full of supplies like blankets, protein bars, flashlights, hand warmers- you name it- to our neighbors experiencing homelessness.
Reason #3 it was cool: After exactly one year of growing this ministry, after this day we were able to hand out our 770th meal in the Downtown Denver area. Some of those meals went to the same person on separate occasions, but in general we were able to serve, have conversations with, and pray for almost every recipient of a Neighbors meal.
An overall super cool and unexpected way to end 2023, we are so grateful for every dollar and every minute everyone has spent to help love our neighbors ◡̈
Some post-outreach prayer requests:
- Cece and Knox: they were clear-minded and receptive of our words and received prayer and words of encouragement over their situations. Pray that God would continue to stir their hearts towards relationship with Him!
- Jason: he lost his phone which had his return bus ticket to Oregon. He is trying to see his grandma before she dies and is generally going through a rough time.
- Prayer requests from the people we met:
- Rick and Amanda: pray for shelter and housing, as they walked all the way from Missouri in hopes for homeless housing that didn’t come through.
- Taylor: a Muslim guitar player who we want to pray for an open heart in him.
- Gigi: pray for her to find shelter, as well as healing from a street sweeper accident she was involved in.
- Amy: pray for help with overcoming addiction and being able to get back home to Oklahoma.
- Polar Bear: pray for his heart to be opened up to Jesus.
- Luke - pray for help overcoming addiction and finding hope for his life. He’s a great guy who has made some mistakes that have changed his entire life’s trajectory.
