Don't Walk By

Sometimes when you start feeling a little ungrateful for things, you need a reality check. Saturday was my reality check. I'd heard about the Don't Walk By campaign at church, and it's an outreach program where volunteers walk the streets of Manhattan looking for homeless people to offer a meal and shelter to. They also offer counseling, rehabilitation and transition services to help them get off the street permanently if they want. Originally when I signed up I thought you got to work an assigned shift during the time frame of 2-9 p.m. only to find out when I signed up that you actually work the entire 2-9 p.m. shift. I started trying to think of excuses that I couldn't work the entire time, but I couldn't think of any. So our fellowship group and some of our soccer team signed up to serve together. Saturday was supposed to be the day of the blizzard. I'm not going to lie, I was hoping that maybe they would cancel it. Then I started thinking about how these people live on the street during blizzards, and the least I could do was be out with them in it for a few hours. Turns out the snow missed us completely, and it was just cold. In the low 20s cold and windy. What's really funny is that almost every weekend they did this campaign, it was the coldest day of the week. God has a funny way of working like that, don't you think? We did some training for a couple of hours, and then they sent us out in our teams. When I showed up I was just supposed to be a regular team member, but I was greeted by Faye who said "this is Melody" to the check-in girl, and then the check-in girl said "oh you're Melody? We've been expecting you!" Haha. Turns out they needed more leaders, and my whole team had been coming in saying "I'm on Melody's team."

So I went and switched out my stuff for the leader vest and badge. Apparently you don't need additional training to be a team leader. The lady sent me over to a guy and said "tell him you're Melody, he'll know who you are." I kind of felt like a unknown celebrity. He handed me a clipboard and told me our team had neighborhood I, which was my neighborhood! It was one of those moments where you think "ok God, what's up?" We went to the neighborhood and snaked through each street. Then we headed down to the Riverside Drive area and through a park looking for people. We were out there for three hours, and we didn't find a single person! I was glad because it meant that no one was on the street in the bitter cold, but I couldn't help but wonder if people had found permanent shelter or were just hiding somewhere temporary but warmer, or if there were just no homeless people that live in that part of town. I do live in Harlem which isn't the richest neighborhood and probably not the most obvious place for people to find help. Overall though our team had a good time together, we were all incredibly tired and sore from the hills, and we felt slightly defeated when we walked back to the church. I can assure you though we tried really hard to find people checking every nook and cranny. We did hear that when we got to the church the count was up to 48 people that had come back for at least a meal.

It was a great experience that went by fast, and I'm hoping next year I can volunteer with them again. Please pray for all the people who were reached during these events!