The Homeless Interviews

This is part 2 of Scott:
Scott and I talked for a few minutes about how Matthew's Hope came to be.  To sum up, he was looking for a church/building to help and house the homeless when the temperatures dropped. Initially he found no one.  Eventually he found my church. We opened our doors whenever the temperature dropped below 39 degrees.  We provided shelter for the night, breakfast, and since we had 1 shower in the building, a shower. The local news found out about this and people began bringing us blankets, clothing, money, food, etc.  We had extra space, they needed a space.  God provided. 


Colleen:  How did the homeless know to come here?

Scott: Because we were going to the camps.  I had been going to the camps for years, for 8 years, so I knew where the camps were and I knew where I could find them and word started to spread once we got out there.  Initially people were very leery because what they really thought was going to happen was- listen to me preach and i will feed you.  Show me where Jesus did that.  Normally he fed them and then he shared his word with them.  It goes down so much better that way.

We got to talking with the shepherds a little more and they said, what’s your vision? I don’t know if I have one but God is certainly doing something here and they agreed and I said could we get ongoing use of that trailer?  The attitude was sure, we don’t care.  At the time they were talking about possibly using the back half for some other things and so they gave us half of the trailor to use and we said we want to offer something for every Tuesday. (Currently Matthew's Hope feeds and takes care of the homeless's needs on Tuesdays).

Colleen:  What is the most difficult part of working with the homeless people?

Scott: Not becoming an enabler.  That is everybody’s problem. 

Colleen:  What is the easiest part?

Scott: The easiest part is we are based on Matthew 25 right out of the Bible.  Who can argue with a mandate from God like that when He said- when they are thirsty give them something to drink.  We do that.  We got bottled water back here.  We give it away by the case.  It says when they are hungry feed them.  We do that.  We now offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner every Tuesday.  We also provide MRE’s and some other things given to us when people are new to the woods and try to help them set up.  When it said, they were naked, clothe them.  We clothe them.  When they are in prison, visit them.  We visit them.  We do go to jails sometimes and between our own folks and a few volunteers that go to visit them at 33rd (a local jail) and we also partner with some prison ministries that are helping minster to these people. Just becuase they go away it does not mean they let go of them. So the easiest part was, here is what God said do, for crying out loud do it.