Donations in action: Paper plates, lockers
Many of the people The Salvation Army serves are in the middle of crazy circumstances. Their stories can be heartbreaking, uplifting, and everything in between.
Here are some of those stories, submitted by Salvation Army social workers and caseworkers from across Minnesota and North Dakota. Out of respect for the people involved, we are retelling these stories without using names.
If you’ve ever wondered how The Salvation Army uses your donations, here’s your answer:
Water conservation
A middle-aged woman stopped by in need of assistance because her water and electricity were on the verge of being shut off. I made calls to her utility companies to put a hold on the shut-off orders until we could find a solution.
Afterward, the woman asked for paper plates and plastic eating utensils so that she could save water by not having to wash dirty dishes. Normally we don’t carry these items in our food shelf, but on this day, we happened to have some. I gave them to her, along with some toilet paper.
The woman said she had worked her whole life, but retired early to care for her ailing mother. She had thought she could live off her savings. “The money goes a lot quicker than you would ever think,” she told me.
As I walked her out, she stopped, threw her arms around me, and began to cry. “Thank you for being so nice to me,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
I told the woman not to worry. “That’s why The Salvation Army is here, and that’s why the work we do is so important,” I said.
I was blessed to meet this lady.
Sleeping in a storage locker
We are in the process of helping a homeless woman get into stable housing. The woman has mental health issues and owns a companion dog.
Due to the companion dog, the woman has not been allowed to sleep inside any local shelters. On the coldest nights of January, she and her dog had no choice but to sleep inside her storage locker.
Lately, the woman has occasionally been able to sleep at a hotel. Recently, I visited the woman inside one of the hotel lobbies. I brought her food, along with bus passes she could use to get to her housing appointments with the county. I pray she secures housing in the near future.
Gainful employment
I am a caseworker for a woman who lives in a Salvation Army housing unit. The woman’s biggest barrier to self-sufficiency has been her inability to find a good-paying and stable job that’s close to home.
For the past two years, she’s been working two to three part-time jobs at any given time. At one point, she was driving 50 miles one-way for one of the jobs, and it only paid $9 an hour.
I have since spent much time teaching the woman job-seeking skills. These efforts paid off recently when she declared she had found a full-time job two miles from home that paid $13 per hour – plus commission!
The best part? She found the job, applied and interviewed for it all by herself, without any of my assistance.
Self-sufficiency is a powerful thing, and I am proud to help people achieve it.
Do it for love
A few days ago, I asked one of our regular volunteers, “Are you coming in tomorrow?”
He replied, “I don’t know. I’ll have to pray about it. I’m not yet sure where God wants me to share the love.”
I laughed, thinking his response was just a smooth way of passively hinting he probably wouldn’t be coming in.
But the next day, the volunteer did show up. “I guess this is where God wanted me to share the love,” he said.
His statement and actions reminded me that love should be the deepest reason of why we, as followers of Christ, do what we do.
I began to ponder Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, adapting the passages to fit my job here at The Salvation Army: If I give a family 100 pounds of food, and I advocate to keep their electricity from being shut off, but I do not have love, I am nothing. If I give referral services to as many people as I can in one day, and I boast that I helped as many as I could, but I do not have love, I gain nothing.
We all have hard days that can detour our thinking of why we do what we do. I have now learned to re-center myself and do what I do out of love, and love alone.
Please join The Salvation Army by volunteering or making a donation to support your local community.