If you are down and out — as so many seem to be lately — Grace Episcopal Church wants to help.
Now in its second year, the parish is offering ‘Warmth in the Night’ to those in need in the community.
Though the church does open its doors and offer a warm place to sleep during this (normally) cold season, Father Edward Erb says that is just the tip of iceberg.
“What we’re offering here is really more of a ‘ministry of hospitality,’” Erb said in an interview Friday. “We measure our success less in terms of how many people are staying here overnight and more through how we can help people in other ways.”
As an example of this, Erb points to a young couple his parish recently helped by getting them bus fare back to their family in Pittsburgh when the job the husband had come to town for fell through.
There are many other examples.
In one, Erb says last year a woman who had been sleeping in an ATM booth for four days came to the shelter with her contact lenses crusted onto her corneas. Fortunately, with two eye doctors in the parish, Erb says the woman was able to have the problem dealt with and one of the doctors was able to set her up with a sample package of disposable contacts.
While he says those in such desperate need are a rarity, Erb says he saw the need for a shelter and related services in Wayne and Pike counties early in his nine year tenure at Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Hamlin.
“People used to say to me, ‘We don’t have homeless people in Hamlin,’” he said, “But I always said ,’Yes we do, but it’s easy to hide in the woods.”
Erb says he began to recognize the importance of programs like ‘Warmth in the Night’ when he was attending seminary in Manhattan. Back then he says he spent a lot of time volunteering at the largest homeless shelter in New York City, which served between 1,000 and 1,100 people each day of the year.
While here in Wayne County the need is obviously much less than that, Erb says it is greater than many realize simply because the culture of the area does not encourage people to seek the help they need.
“People hate to admit that they’re homeless,” he said, “And a lot of them are afraid of churches. It’s like they think the minute they get inside, we’re going to lock the doors and start beating them over the head with a Bible. That certainly isn’t my way and I know that’s not how this parish has ever been. We just want to do whatever we can to help get people through hard times.
