With overnight temperatures in the teens, it’s good to be indoors and warm. But what if home was just a car, or an abandoned building, or a cardboard box on the street?
“I was in Washington one time, and I saw a man ...sleeping on top of a (street) grate. And I don’t know how they do it. You hear that they sleep under bridges, and doorways and cardboard boxes and I don’t know how they survive,” says Lori Van Horn of Beach Lake.
Van Horn thinks of the homeless often. She’s one of a dozen Christian women involved in the Beach Lake United Methodist Church’s ministry of making warm sleeping bags for folks without. It’s part of a greater mission project known as My Brother’s Keeper, started by Florence and Jim Wheatley of Hop Bottom, PA, in 1982.
Beach Lake United Methodist Church has been involved in the project for over two decades, dating back to when Shirley Mott was President of the Beach Lake United Methodist Women. “When they first started, I guess they just had to take a little of this and a little of that to make it warm ... Since then, God has really blessed us with people donating big pieces (of material). So, we’re always asking for comforters, blankets, sheets, draperies,” she said, and more. Also on their wish list is thermal underwear, socks, hats, gloves. “When a sleeping bag has been completed, we put in socks, and a (homemade) hat, and a shirt, or whatever else we have. And a book, an Upper Room or Reader’s Digest — good reading material,” she said.
The group gathers every Friday throughout the months of October, November, January, February and March, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. With three sewing machines and a dozen volunteers, they cranked out 424 sleeping bags this year. “Normally, if we get the material, we can make about 100 more than that,” Van Horn said.
They also have volunteers who deliver the sleeping bags to Hop Bottom, Susquehanna County, about an hour from Beach Lake, Van Horn said. “From there, they take them wherever they’re needed. They’ve gone to Scranton, New York City, Philadelphia, Binghamton. That’s just a few of the places. And they never have enough. And I’m sure, with the economy the way it is, there are more and more that are homeless. Unfortunately, children, too — families,” she said.
Van Horn held out a picture showing just some of the many sleeping bags they’ve created. We wondered what she sees when she looks at the picture? “I see someone keeping warm, hopefully. Flo Wheatley says, ‘Our aim is to keep them alive for two days until someone else can come and help them.’
“There are people out there that need our help. And I feel that God has given our United Methodist Women this ministry to do,” Van Horn said. “When I get in bed at night, under my electric blanket, I ask God to please be with those that don’t have warm beds, or beds at all.”
To join the group or donate material, please call the church at 729-7011.
