New Year Greetings

     Point of Hope was bustling with activity before Christmas.  Even though our transition housing program is going through some restructuring at the moment, I had thought we would have a quieter Christmas, but not so.

     Just to back up a bit, in the late summer I began to realize our program was not as effective as I had hope and realized we had to make some major changes in the way we were providing our service.  As the resident’s time were all coming to an end anyway, we decided in late August, early September, to speed their move to finding other housing so they would have a place by the time winter set in. My plan of action was not clear as I began trying to make changes. We had no Director of Operations yet and we needed a committee to help us, and so the management at FBAMC became the committee, with those helping to guide the mission from Lexington. After some discussion and meetings, we forged ahead to begin the program anew.  Once all the residents had moved out, we began looking at what we needed to do to help the people who came to us who were in need of housing. We saw the struggles these families were having and realizing our limited resource of staff, we decided to call on volunteers and some of the staff from the head office.  So while Dale is working on repairing the housing units, we are busy developing a program which the people who move in, will have the opportunity being a part of.  The program will be composed of three meetings a week.  One will be a 12 step journey working on each step for four meetings, which is a month at a time.  The other will be on assisting the residents to identify feelings and emotions, so they can discover their inner resources and their strengths, also meeting on a weekly basis.  The third portion will be monthly meetings of parenting, employment skills/job training support, and budgeting.  Once a month, there will be a resident meeting to discuss issues pertinent to living in community and in the complex. In conjunction with these programs, we hope to have a children’s afterschool program happening while these sessions are happening.

     Please pray for us that this renewed venture will be an effective means of assisting families find and maintain long term housing so that the children can feel safe and be safe.  We hope that the children will have better opportunities as they grow up, if the parents learn the necessary skills of prioritizing their finances, parenting essentials, maintaining employment and learning the value of education.  There is so much needed to make this program work.

     Our needs are many.  Some of the immediate needs would be finances to help fund a certified child care worker for about ten hours a week. Another might be providing initiatives like a $50.00 reward for the families in budgeting class who are able to maintain and stay to their budget or their goal.  Many problems exist for young families here.  There are no real employment opportunities in this area and people do not want to relocate.  There are addiction problems stemming from one or two generations and so even the parents themselves are not always aware of what the problem is and why they cannot make things work.  It is also a problem in our culture when quick fixes are daily thrown at us from television or other forms of media, and these days often also in the form of pills. We just take it for granted and don’t even see the anything wrong with it.  Pharmaceuticals companies are a multimillion dollar business.  So we have difficult work ahead of us, and realistically we will not have overnight success, but perhaps we will get better in meeting some of the issues at hand.

      Now back to Christmas and New Years.  I had volunteered us at Point of Hope, that being Miranda from Stain Glass, Dale our full time permanent volunteer, and Lois from another program who works with us part time, to host the Father Beiting Appalachian Mission staff Christmas party which was on December 22.  Miranda was our cook and she did a grand a job as ever, except she told everyone as they arrived, a small oversight for which we were all responsible.  We had let her potatoes cook themselves dry on the stove and when she came back from her errand, she was aghast.  As hard as she tried to fix the problem, she told everyone as they arrived that potatoes did not turn out.  No one would have noticed if she had not told them because the potatoes were so tasty.  She said they were rubbery and made jokes throughout the party as to how we can use them.  The party went very well in spite of this mishap.

      The following day December 23, people began to arrive.  Our friendly volunteers and friends flew in from Boston on the Thursday evening making sure to arrive early enough for the shopping spree the next day in preparation for the Christmas dinner.  This is becoming a Christmas tradition for Joanie who also came last year to prepare the Christmas dinner in honor of Father Beiting.  This year she came with Cheryl who volunteered to do the tidy up and pot wash.  I must say they were a really good team and Christine joined them making her now famous apple crisp.  Father Beiting had these three angels with him throughout the Christmas season.  They even managed to shovel the road going up to Padre’s Place where no car had ventured to travel because of the snow and ice. The road is very steep and winding.  After all their hard work, they managed to get Padre up there for what they thought would be a little rest.  Girls, did you really think you were going to rest?  You know Padre does not rest so how can you.  Well you did a great and wonderful job as his immediate assistants.

     January 1 was Father Beiting’s 87^th birthday and again Joanie outdid herself in preparing a magnificent New Year’s dinner.  Father Beiting was deeply touched and his speech touched everyone in the room. He had everyone's undivided attention.  You could almost hear a pin drop.  He shared his daily struggle with us regarding his eyesight, being barely able to see anything, his difficulty hearing, and difficulty walking due to the intense pain he lives with.  Even though he had been going for physical therapy, it was not doing as much as he had hoped.  His words, gestures and posture were all so touching to see and hear his humility, and of his brokenness.  This is a very special man and God has a very special plan for him.  One can see how much he continues to love God having given up his life to service for God's people.

     Moving on to other visitors, on the same day in the afternoon when the Bostonians arrived, it was, believe it or not, Sr Bernadette.  Oh how happy we all were to see her and to have her here for this special feast.  She stayed four full days and left the following Tuesday.  One could see her heart belongs here.  Though her time was too short with us, she did manage to get many hours of visiting in.  Her visit was another very special gift for Father Beiting.

     On Monday evening our friends from Akron arrived, Kaija and her son Kody.  You know who they are if you have read the previous post, and their adventure the first night they arrived.  Kaija has such a good sense of humor as she related the story the next day of their adventure of the night before, so we convinced her to share it with you. If you have been here before, you will understand and know where and how things are. I imagine it is not so humorous when one is cold and tired, but she always manages to make things fun. I enjoy their visits. While Kody worked with Dale, Kaija and I continued the work of articulating forms, guidelines, and other necessary paperwork needed for our new applications and grand reopening in February.  They also spent time helping Father Beiting in the rectory.

     Christmas and New Years were a very special time for all of us, graced and blessed by the friends who came to spend this sacred time with us. Thank you to all who are so generous with your prayers, your time and resources.  May God bless you richly in this new year of 2011. Please pray for us.