This year we had a really emotional reaction to something sad that happened in Utah. That sadness we felt inspired our service this year.
In Utah, just north of Salt Lake, you have Davis County. Over the last few weeks, there have been three cities in Davis County--North Salt Lake, Fruit Heights and Kaysville--that have taken a firm stance. They're a hard no on making sure homeless people in their communities don't freeze to death when temperatures drop.
For context, Utah can hit 20°F in the winter. Anything below 32°F is freezing. But anywhere below 50°F, people can be subject to hypothermia, frost bite, and exposure, all of which can lead to death.
In Utah, the state requires each county to have winter plans for homeless people. One option is to setup Code Blue shelters when temperatures hit 18°F to provide shelter for "at most 16 unhoused people." There are ~10K homeless people in Utah and 18°F feels crazy low, but sure. We've got to start somewhere.
When the county started looking for solutions, one person thought he had a good suggestion. Don Kraftt, the leader of a Presbyterian church called Mountain Road Church, offered up his church building for the site. Much to Kraftt's surprise, he was met with "intense backlash, and fear, from his neighbors," which made him feel obligated to back out of his commitment. A decision that, when announced at a city meeting, was met with "a round of applause from the crowd."
The idea of people taking time out of their day to go protest a center that isn’t even a permanent homeless, but a temporary facility to make sure those less fortunate folks don’t freeze to death. And not just to make their voices known, but to applaud when someone else has been bullied into choosing NOT to do Christian service. Its heartbreaking.
So we had a conversation with the kids to explain the situation and why it made us sad, and to talk about what we could do about it.
After explaining the situation, first we set out to find the stuff that we thought we could give away. The boys were nice enough to pick out some of their clothes they could give so that homeless kids could have some things to wear when it gets cold.
After picking out their own clothes, they helped me go through all my clothes to sort out the things we could give away to people. All together, we loaded up about 5 bags full of clothes.
After loading up our own clothes that we could donate, we headed to the store to buy some new clothes. Things that we didn’t have at home, but that people who are without homes could use. We got blankets, jackets, sweaters, gloves, and toiletries.
By the time we were done with our own donations and some things we had bought we had about 10 bags full of things to help people stay warm in Utah. Once we were done gathering everything up, we talked with the boys about how they felt about what we’d done that day.
When we were done, we also reached out to some of our friends to gather up donations and money that we could send to some of the things we had gathered together.
The woman at the center helped us tally up the value of all the items we’d given and all together it was about $10,000 worth of cash and clothes to help people stay warm this winter.
It makes us sad when other people choose to be more worried about their property values than they are about their fellow human beings. But we know that Jesus himself told us what the two most important commandments are: (1) Love God, and (2) Love our neighbors. And remembering that helped us to remember what was most important as we tried to do service this year.