Can a day be any better?!

I have been very tired and took a lazy, sleepy morning, finally leaving home at lunchtime. I immediately recognized the sure sign that despite my late start, it was a great day! As soon as I got outside I saw a @Ramon_DeLeon Domino’s delivery being made to a home across the street. (Obviously a sign from God, as the sun shone down on the pizza delivery besides.) I smiled. BIG. I wanted to post a picture to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…(you know the drill), but sadly, quite sadly, my phone has been uncharged because the USB charger cord broke. Ramon has been so awesome to help offer food to the homeless and those who live in the shelter at @DebsPlaceChi with me, I can’t help but think of him and smile when I see a pizza delivery. So before heading to the bus stop, I walked to @OfficeDepot by my home in Lakeview, Chicago. I went straight back to look at the phone chargers and price them out. And maybe do some dreaming. I checked out the clearance sale section too. I’m a smart woman and refuse to leave a store (especially a “toy store” like Office Depot) without checking all sales. Naturally, I wrote a mental wish list of everything I’d love to have. Anyway, I decided to test my luck. I spoke to the Office Depot store manager. I wish I paid better attention to his nametag! I explained my situation, being unemployed, living at a nearby shelter, and in desperate need of a new charger cord for my phone. I offered to trade gift cards for multiple stores or make any arrangement possible to get one. He gave me a new one, no cost or anything. He said that he had an extra. I damn near jumped and gave the man a hug and a kiss on the cheek! LOL! I sincerely cannot thank this manager enough! Honestly, the same goes for @Ramon_DeLeon. I have been moody sometimes and not blogging as I was, I’ve been slower to mention how greatly I — how greatly WE at Deborah’s Place / Marah’s — appreciate his kindness in delivering pizzas to us. So surely, seeing the Domino’s delivery near my home today was a sign that the day could only be better? That the world is filled with the kindness of others. We just have to ask. I admit, that is something that I am still working on. I have always tried to be very independent and hate to ask for help. While homeless, I began to learn new social skills. One of which, includes asking for help. I am still learning this one. It is okay to ask help. I don’t like to get something for nothing. I feel the gratitude and pay from my heart, if nothing else. I appreciate what my followers and others have done to help myself and others. Many a time, someone’s generosity has brought tears to my eyes. Thank you, @Ramon_DeLeon, the manager at @OfficeDepot in Lakeview, Chicago, @mafiahairdreser, @Superdawg, and so many others for all your kindness and help. <3 My phone service is still temporarily suspended because I couldn't pay the monthly bill, but having the new charging cord is a fresh start to getting it back on! I can now charge the phone, use my contacts and calendar to schedule appointments, and use email and make free phone calls on wifi. I am happy!!!!!!!

Watch “Meet my new homeless friend Paul Jenkins” on YouTube

#Donations #ThankYou for the love!

Enormous gratitude for all the donations received recently for the homeless! Received were two bags of clothing, and also over 30 puzzles ranging in size from 500-2,000 pieces and a TV with built-in VCR player was donated by ONE person’s family alone! I collected the last of the current donations this afternoon–with promise to donate again in the future! #Awesome!!! The excitement by puzzle enthusiasts at the homeless shelter is indescribable–I was greeted with big eyes and a near scream with the first load of puzzles! I can’t thank Liz and my other followers enough for the joy brought to so many people! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

If you have something to donate, please let me know! Options are unlimited! Cross & Crown Church MOH is also in need of clothing, especially socks, shoes, and underwear. Please see my page about MOH here.

God is with us

You wouldn’t believe the night we women at the homeless shelter had last night, and how it went from almost like a fun slumber party to ending with 911 being called when a severely emotional young woman in the group suffered a seizure after sharing very personal, painful memories about her life. Everyone gathered round to pray and I have honestly never felt more spiritual energy from praying as I did last night! It was powerful! Then this morning I received the following in my email. Its just amazing…

One day, when I was a freshman in high school,
I saw a kid from my class was walking home from school.

His name was Kyle.

It looked like he was carrying all of his books.

I thought to myself, ‘Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday?’

‘He must really be a nerd.’

I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on.

As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him.

They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt.

His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him…

He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes.

My heart went out to him. So, I jogged over to him as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye.

As I handed him his glasses, I said, ‘Those guys are jerks.’

They really should get lives…

‘He looked at me and said, ‘Hey thanks!’

There was a big smile on his face.

It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.

I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived.

As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before…

He said he had gone to private school before now.

I would have never hung out with a private school kid before.

We talked all the way home, and I carried some of his books.

He turned out to be a pretty cool kid.

I asked him if he wanted to play a little football
with my friends.

He said yes.

We hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him, and my  friends thought the same of him.

Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again.

I stopped him and said, ‘Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!’

He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends…

When we were seniors we began to think about college.

Kyle decided on  Georgetown  and I was going to Duke.

I knew that we would always be friends, that the miles would never   be a problem.

He was going to be a doctor and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class.

I teased him all the time about being a nerd.

He had to prepare a speech for graduation.

I was so glad it wasn’t me having to get up there and speak .

Graduation day, I saw Kyle.

He looked great.

He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school.

He filled out and actually looked good in glasses.

He had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him.

Boy, sometimes I was jealous!

Today was one of those days.

I could see that he was nervous about his speech.

So, I smacked him on the back and said, ‘Hey, big guy, you’ll be great!’

He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began…

‘Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years…

Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach…but mostly your friends…..

I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them.

‘I am going to tell you a story.’

I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told of the  first day we met.

He had planned to kill himself over the weekend.

He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn’t have to do it later and he was carrying his stuff home.

He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile.

‘Thankfully, I was saved.’

‘My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable…’

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment.

I saw his Mom and Dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile.

Not until that moment did I realize it’s depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions..

With one small gesture you can change a person’s life.

For better or for worse….

God puts us all in each others lives to impact one another in some way.

Look for God in others.

Confused happiness?

I don’t know what I even want to write. I am tired and drugged on a narcotic pain medicine, but feeling happy overall and better than I was. I am frequently plagued by bad headaches. Another current issue is that the shelters seem to regularly serve high protein/potassium meals. The one Thursday night was especially high and due to kidney damage the high protein/potassium content made me sick. I need to restart food slowly to avoid worsening. I am getting there. And as for the headaches, the Vicodin is finally starting to help today; it didn’t do much for me yesterday. I still feel kind of confused and not right. Like part of my mind is missing? I don’t know. I just can’t think quite right. I don’t know if any of this even makes sense. I don’t plan to re-read it and make sure. I’m just rambling my thoughts on the keyboard. Of what thoughts I think and can remember and make some sort of sense out of, LOL. I think.

Be safe, my new friend.

A woman came to the shelter overnight from the hospital. A domestic violence victim. And she didn’t speak English–she spoke Assyrian. They were planning to put her in a cab and send her to the homeless services office. I told them to check with whoever is on-call because the office isn’t open that early. Well, they got the ok and someone would be there to open early. I couldn’t let this woman take the cab alone, not speaking English, so I said that I would go with her. And good thing I did!!! Dispatch didn’t tell the driver an address, he asked about payment, directions to the building (which side of the road, etc). Anyway, my heart goes out to her. Her face was quite bruised. We got the office and the caseworker who was there didn’t even know about her or that she was coming, so I had to tell him the story. If this woman had gone alone, what would have happened?! Thank God I went with her! I had an appointment to go to in the city so I hated to leave her at the services office. I tried to explain to her the best I could, and gave her a hug–which she gladly and emotionally returned, with a kiss. I could see she was unhappy and scared that I had to leave. She affected me. Not a PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) trigger. Just one of those very sad things but happy that she is getting help and I was able to be one of the people to help her. I have thought about her throughout the day, wondering what happened. I assume that she was taken to a safe house for domestic violence victims and will no longer be at the shelters with us. I do hope she remains ok. I wish I knew.

A mentoring program for the homeless?

This morning on my way in to the Arlington Heights Memorial Library one of the employees stopped and talked to me. He mentioned something that I have said before: there needs to be a mentoring program for the homeless.

New people arrive to homelessness every day. To whom can they turn for help? When I first became homeless, I didn’t know what to do, where to go. I didn’t know “the ropes” to being homeless. I got in my car and just sat there. I thought, “Now what?”. I finally drove with no real destination. When it got dark and I was tired, I didn’t know where it would be safe to sleep. I didn’t know how I would stay clean without being able to take a shower. I wouldn’t be able to cook.

The homeless such as myself can actually teach others how to survive homelessness! I also believe that non-homeless people can volunteer to mentor the homeless–for social skills or being a “e-pen pal”, job search skills, addiction recovery. Homeless people also have skills and knowledge that someone needs! Why is there not a job agency that matches homeless people with employers who are looking for new talent with the opportunity to help someone in need? Why does the homeless services agency not offer a program in which the homeless receive specialized job skills training to advocate for themselves and the agency by going to businesses themselves to inform them of homelessness and needs, and to ask them to consider helping the homeless with services, discounts, or job postings? Currently they have only a lawn care services crew during warmer months as “job training”. The job training services and others should be expanded!

There is so much that homeless people have to offer–to each other and their communities! We have a need to attack homelessness ourselves! Teach me and I will teach you. I  have mentioned some of these things and others to the local homeless services agency but they have not developed any new mentoring programs. We can still do this ourselves! Help me to create better opportunities for the homeless so we can build ourselves a new life!

The Spirit of Giving

This is the time of year when everyone looks to give to others. The holidays have a dramatic effect on people and I am no exception. I celebrate Christmas and my birthday is coming up very soon. Recent tweets by Jeff Shuey and Lotay Yang have inspired me! My mind is racing, contemplating what effort I might be able to do in celebration of my birthday and Christmas?! I would give anything to be able to organize an effort for a van to be donated to Cross and Crown Church so they can help the homeless! But that sadly is expensive and probably not as realistic a short-term goal at this time. So then what would be?! Perhaps I could organize a Christmas party and/or gifts for the homeless–maybe local businesses might be willing to donate? Gift certs and gift cards, free meals, gas cards, auto repair, clothes, shoes/boots…??? Maybe I could open a special PayPal account? I want to do something special for everyone! What can I do?!

A big thank you to Cross and Crown Church

Each and every Saturday of the year the volunteers with the Ministry of Hope at Cross and Crown Church in Arlington Heights, Illinois, serve a feast for the homeless and low-income of the area. Approximately 50 to 70 people enjoy the hot breakfast and lunch each week. Many partake in the opportunity to attend a worship service.

The volunteers and pastors of Cross and Crown are a gift from God to the homeless. They live from their hearts, offering smiles, joy, friendship, hope and support to all who need. They serve delicious meals, give clothing, bikes, and more. They give transportation to and from the church in a church member’s van. The Ministry of Hope is NOT even part of the church budget–all costs come out of their own pockets!

The Ministry of Hope volunteers are absolutely amazing! I honestly don’t know how such a small church can do so much for so many! Some may remember that it was this same church that was vandalized around Christmastime. There was an outpouring of support from communities all around, including an awesome new Christmas tree to replace the one that was damaged by the vandalism.

I felt glad that this church was able to celebrate Christmas and feel the warmth of the community help that we homeless feel when we go to the Ministry of Hope on Saturdays. I hope to return the love and kindness someday by finding a way to help them myself, perhaps by finding them a new or used van of their own to give us rides in to and from the church. It would even grant the church the ability to give us rides to the church on Sundays so that we may attend the regular worship service–something many of us wish to do but can’t get to the church on our own.

View a pdf file about the Ministry of Hope.

No pain, no gain.

Trying to find motivation for writing this. Right now, oddly enough, it is pain distraction. I’m having some bad renal-related pain on the right side. (It was on the left side in back this morning, but not nearly as bad.) Finally just popped a good, strong pain pill and logged on to WordPress.

I think that pain is what motivates me to writing in my blog the most–whether it be physical pain or emotional pain. There are a lot of times when I would do it more often, in immediate reaction to something, but I don’t have a laptop or netbook computer to capture those moments. So then I text a tweet to my Twitter account from my cell phone instead. Sometimes if I am in a place where I can write privately and have abundant paper with me I will write my thoughts to transcribe later.

Life is like what seems to attract me to blogging: no pain, no gain. It takes some level of effort to succeed and reach goals. When I blog, I gain from readers, and from within my self. In life, I gain by doing things that will lead to taking me out of homelessness. I am trying. And I am doing. I am taking steps to helping myself accomplish that goal. I am trying to make more notes to help me remember things. I am getting mental health care, including counseling and psych medication. I am working with my caseworker regarding psych issues and future housing possibilities. I know that everything is working out. Finally. I am on the right track.