Street Stories

Weblog of Seattle minister to the homeless Rick Reynolds, Operation Nightwatch

My Photo
Name:
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States

Caring for human beings seems like the best use of my time, homeless or not.

Friday, June 23, 2006

This one's for Jen

Jen, you just gotta wait for Friday when we update!

Yeah, things get a li'l dicey in the summer, missed a week on the street. I hate that.

Out tonight with Pastor Dave. Powered through a dead night at Dravus Street -- drank coffee (thus I'm flying at 1:00 a.m.) When we walked in, we became the only customers, but it soon changed.

Milk Maid was happy to see us.

Dave won $51 with pull tabs, paid for pool, tipped the bar, and had a good conversation. But we soon moved on.

Downtown at 3rd and Bell we ran into "Colleen" who was full of the Holy Ghost and Pabst. She described at length her conversion and the work of Victory Outreach. She relapsed, but "at least I'm not using dope." We walked her to Angelines, I gave her a Nightwatch business card and promised to go see her pastor.

Back at headquarters I found a room full of homeless women waiting for the mat that would never come. The city is void of women's shelter. We're trying to get something going. Right now we have nothing but hope and a handshake -- waiting for people to come back from vacation and give the okay. Maybe in two weeks? Is that impossible?

A small shelter for 15 women is going to cost about $10,000 a month. Hard to believe, and that is with free location -- no rent. But think about it -- two workers overnight, 10 hour shifts, 31 days a month x 20/hours a day -- 620 hours x $14 hour with the benefits. The rest is supplies and supervision an hour a day.

Gotta do it. Looking into the face of those women tonight almost killed me.
Rick

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home