Practical Matters

Don’t Forget the Can Opener

If you’ve started a motel ministry or if you’re thinking about feeding the homeless you already have the seeds of compassion in you. You care and want to get involved. At first you’ll be using your own money and pantry (and with a little luck also those of your friends) to get what you need to take food to the homeless. Whatever it is, it will be enough for a start, because the most important thing is that you do start.

You’ll have cans of soup, spaghetti, fruit, vegetables, chili and other tasty items to distribute. Your homeless clients will pretty much be very glad and grateful you want to help them. They’ll receive the food with appreciation especially if they have children.

And then that day will come, probably sooner than later, when you’re urging someone to fill up their bag that they look at you with sad eyes and tell you thank you, but they can’t take anything because They Don’t Have a Can Opener!!!!!!

How could something so simple bring what you’re doing to a crashing halt? To avoid this situation, because believe us you will feel very, very bad, make sure you always have a few hand crank can openers in your car. You can get them at any grocery or retail store, they don’t take up much room and they are gold to someone who doesn’t have one.

Little Things Make a Huge Impact

The adage “People will forget what you gave them, but they will never forget how you made them feel” is never truer than when you work with children. Never make the mistake of thinking that they aren’t listening to you and that your words have no impact. I learned this in the most marvelous way last Saturday at our Library Program.

We have a library for the families at one of the motels we provide service to. It’s a beautiful little room that management retrofitted for us. It looks just like a mini library. One of our adult clients voiced it best, “It’s so pretty it hurts”.

A little girl and her father came into our library for the first time. The girl was around 6 years old. We explained how the library worked and that she could check out 2 books that needed to be returned in two weeks. She did and off they went. About 45 minutes later they came back because she had already finished one of the books and wanted to check out another one. We were delighted to help her.

She then came to me with two more books and asked if she could check them out for her baby sister. I told her that she was a wonderful big sister to care so much about her baby sister that she wanted to bring her some books too. I praised her for being so kind and thoughtful. I made sure we had intense one on one eye contact while I was speaking to her.

She was a very shy little girl, but her face just opened up, she stood up straighter and she beamed at my words. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she had taken in everything I had said. I realized, not for the first time, what a blessing and responsibility it is to work with children. We have such an opportunity to reinforce behavior that will see them into their adult years with magnificent benefits.

I know this because I remember the times an adult in my life praised me when I was a little girl. I remember how my little heart expanded at their words.

Words are free, but their impact can last a lifetime. If we work with children, we need to make sure that impact is positive. You may never see that child again, but you can know that on that day, at that time, you made a difference.

Time to Cut the Cord

Time to cut the cord. Whenever you start serving at a motel, your intent is to stay there forever, serving the clients as they come and go in whatever way is best for them. You want to commit to them in a way that the rest of society is reluctant to commit to anyone or anything. You want to be the one constant your clients can depend on, in their very uncertain world.

For the most part, this really is what happens. You can start serving in a motel and before you know it, you look back and realize you’ve been serving there for fifteen years or more. You’ve seen thousands of people come and go, and you remember the majority of them fondly.

Unfortunately, every once in a while you may find yourself in a situation where you have to decide whether or not to keep serving a motel. Not because you care for the people any less, but because it has become downright dangerous for you to continue serving there.

Back to School–For Children Only?

Back to School–For Children Only—Really? In a motel ministry many of your services are geared toward children, none more so that in August—Back to School time. We spend the entire month of August making the rounds of the motels we serve, distributing backpacks to make sure the children get to start that all important first day of school with everything they need, looking and feeling “Just like everyone else”. It’s important to them and doubly so to us.

We hand out backpacks before school starts. Don’t wait until September. It will be too late to prevent an embarrassing first day for the children. A day that can shape their attitudes toward school for the entire year or even the rest of their lives if they’re shamed for not having a new backpack and all the things on the teacher’s wish list.

The children are your main focus for this activity, but sometimes they are not the only focus. Adults need backpacks too. If you have enough and if you can do it quietly, don’t cut the adults out. Many of the adults ride bicycles, the bus or even walk to work. They have to carry everything they need for the day with them. They can’t leave things in a car they don’t have and they certainly can’t make a quick trip home if they need something.

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Things aren’t always what they seem. Burn this in your brain. Let it become your mantra. It will save you from leaping before you look, thus averting many potential disasters.

That’s probably good advice for just about any situation life can throw at you, but we’re referring to one in particular that you will encounter thousands of times in the motels before you hang up your grocery bags and pass the baton to a new generation.

As it becomes more apparent to your homeless clients that you are a kind, caring person who will listen, they are going to start talking to you about their problems. They may even ask you outright for help. Be very careful in situations that appear to involve injustices done to your clients, especially by their neighbors, their employers, motel owners or law enforcement. (This is only a short list. The possibilities are endless). Your first inclination will be to leap right in and make whatever’s wrong right, or make it go away to ease things for your client because you can’t stand to see them distressed.

It’s an admirable thought, but before you do anything make sure you have all the facts. It’s human nature to want to be the one “in the right”. We all do it. It’s also human nature to fudge the facts a bit or embellish them. The chances of you having the entire story presented to you truthfully and accurately the first time out is dishearteningly small.

If you take your client’s words at 100% face value and leap into action, you may find the quicksand you land on rapidly sucking you in.

Simple is Better

Keep it simple—it’s better. Time and again when playing games with the children, it is hammered home to me that it’s not how much the game costs that matters, but how much enjoyment it brings.

I comb retail stores, teacher’s supply stores and of course amazon.com for game ideas. There is no lack of games available. The hard part is weeding out the million possibilities to a few purchases. I’ve finally learned the hard way and the expensive way that children don’t care about how much a game costs, or, how many brightly colored pieces it has.

This is important for you too. The more pieces there are the more you can lose. Don’t forget—you’re portable. You need to transport and keep track of all those pieces. The boxes the games come in are going to take a beating by being constantly transported and eventually the box won’t hold the pieces any longer. You need a game that can eventually be contained in zippered baggies and plastic containers. You also don’t want a game that is ruined if you lose one piece.

Ice Cream Social

Today we had an ice cream social—make your own sundaes. Since it was about 90 degrees outside it was a big hit. This is actually a very simple activity to do, with a little preparation and a few extra hands to help.

The main thing you need obviously is the ice cream. Note: Don’t buy it until immediately before the event, unless you have a very large freezer! And, be sure to have an ice chest on hand. The motel we had the ice cream social at actually provides refrigerators for the residents, so we would have been able to store extra ice cream there, but this is the exception, not the rule.

We served a crowd of about 50 children and adults. We did fine with one very large tub and three cartons. There was even some leftover for anyone brave enough to want seconds. Even after Baskin Robbins 31 flavors, vanilla is still the #1 favorite flavor in American. No one refuses it.

Next come the toppings. This is where you can get as creative as you want to. Just walk down the candy, cookie and baking aisles. You’ll get lots of ideas. The possibilities are endless. We used small marshmallows, plain and peanut M & Ms, gummy bears, mixed nuts and sprinkles.

Syrups can be as easy as a couple of bottles of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, or the gamut of flavors available. No matter what flavors you get, get double or triple the chocolate. It’s always going to be the favorite flavor.

Then came the whipped cream. Four large cans took care of everyone. Last of all was the cookies. We chose Oreos. They come in several different flavors now, so they make the perfect ice cream accompaniment—in addition to original you can get golden, double stuff, triple stacked, peanut butter, lemon, raspberry and cookie dough. Heaven!

The set-up is something you want to arrange carefully, to avoid chaos and a sticky mess. Also, do as much prep work as you can before so you don’t have a fidgeting crowd and melting ice cream waiting for you. Put the toppings and cookies in plastic containers, ready to be served from. Put plastic spoons in the toppings so little fingers aren’t tempted to just pluck what looks good. Have lots of napkins, paper towels and wet wipes available. Be sure to bring plastic tablecloths. You’re going to need them!

Have a couple of card tables and place everything on them so people can go down them assembly line style. This keeps the line flowing and helps keep everyone cheerful and patient on a hot day. Assign volunteers to go along with the children or they will pile their bowls as high as they can with whatever they see. The potential waste is less of a problem here than the probability of the child becoming very ill from overeating. And guess who has to deal with that?

Be prepared to have fun. This is one of the most popular events we do and we try to do it several times during the long, hot summer. The sticky hugs and kisses are just a bonus!

Project Dignity