A brand new floor, donated by Home Hardware. A beautiful mural painted by Susan Weeks. The backlot, freshly raked and cleaned by one of our guests and then paved and levelled by Eddie's Blacktop. These beautiful changes sure made the place look great for our Open House-which was a total blast, well attended and went off swimingly!
Thank you to the Cara Brady and the Vernon Morning Star for this encouraging write-up:
Mission serves up hope for the homeless
By Cara BradyMorning Star Staff
Apr 13 2007
It's just past noon on a Wednesday at the Upper Room Mission. People come down the stairs from chapel service, chatting quietly, and line up for lunch. People who chose not to attend chapel have been waiting outside and come in to get in line. The volunteers smile and talk as they serve up the hot food. It's not long before everyone is seated in the bright, pleasant room to eat. Before they leave, people can pick up baked goods or produce to take home.
"Our guests are all ages, mostly men," said manager Andrew Yeo. "A large segment are homeless and use the Shelter or Howard House. There are people who have a place to live but can't afford food all the time. The numbers of homeless people are increasing. It's a huge problem everywhere."
The Mission serves three meals a day Monday to Friday, offers one-on-one counseling, makes referrals to other community agencies if wanted, provides clothing, storage lockers, daily chapel services and day programs including literacy, arts and crafts.
Yeo, who has been manager since January, calls being there "a God thing."
He was raised in a Christian home and trained and worked in radio for several years until his two mission trips, one to Panama and one to Africa, made him think about his life.
"It opened my eyes to a lot of things, how much need there is in the world and the joy of people who have faith in God," he said. He came back to work for a Christian radio station in Edmonton and then became a representative of World Vision speaking about child sponsorship. That led to working at the large Hope Mission in Edmonton. His wife is from Vernon and he felt the time was right to take the job here.
"The community and local businesses have reached out to the Mission with so much support in so many ways. We offer what we do here with no conditions, in Christian faith," he said.
He's confident that the Mission is dealing with the recent problems with drugs on the premises in a way that helps everyone.
"There was a small segment that was causing the trouble. Most of the guests never cause any trouble, they always thank the volunteers and appreciate what we do here. We don't want everyone here to be painted as troublemakers and addicts," he said.
"We as a staff have been very vigilant to look for suspicious activity. Drugs are a community-wide problem. We want to be part of the solution." The board of directors of the Mission commissioned an independent Risk Management Committee to gather input, analyze concerns and suggestions and make and implement recommendations to ensure a safe environment.
"Caring for the needs of the whole person — spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically and socially — is the goal," said Becki Ott, executive director of the Upper Room Mission board of directors. The committee will be working for the next few months and community response has been positive so far. "Everyone involved recognizes the important service the Mission provides and has indicated they will do what they can to help," said Mike Buffie, head of the Risk Management Committee.
One of the new policies is to have each person who comes to the mission do a photo registration. More than 100 people have registered so far. The registration asks people about their background, what they are struggling with, what dreams they have for themselves and how the Mission can help.
"We want to re-ignite hope for what is possible. We believe God has placed hopes and dreams in people's hearts for a reason and we want to help people reach their goals. I was surprised at how open the guests were to share their lives. They want things like healing from addictions, abuse and mental illness. I see a wide-spread want for sobriety, to stay clean or get clean and leave the street scene, to get jobs, to learn new things and be productive."
George, who calls himself a travelling man, eats at the Mission off and on. "When you don't have anything to eat, this is a good place to come. There are good-hearted people here who will help you out. People can be destitute through no fault of their own.
“If the Mission wasn't here, some people would be eating out of garbage cans and it would be a sad, sad community. They help people get their lives back together here but you have to want to do it," he said.
Rose was helping clean the tables after lunch. "There are some people like me here who have kids and we have to come to get the extra food. You think you are getting out of the hole with finances and something else always comes up. I'm glad this is here for us," she said.
Gordon Vroom is a volunteer who has also volunteered at the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. "We all go through good times and bad times and it's good to be able to help out. We have to take care of things at home."
It all comes back to the community.
"We really appreciate the support of the community and how they help us with donations, volunteering and offering prayer and encouragement," said Yeo.
The Upper Room Mission (3403-27th Ave. across from the People Place) will have an open house Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information call 549-1231.
Upper Room Mission Wish List
The Upper Room Mission appreciates donations of food, clothing, kitchen things like plastic wrap, convection oven, board games and puzzles, books, Bibles, craft supplies, computer games/programs, paper/pens etc., magnifying eye glasses for reading, gift coupons and small prize items like candy, bus tickets, stamps, a computer and accessories, chairs for dining room, storage cabinet, guitars for music program, trailer hitch for minivan.
Cash is always appreciated.
For more specific information about needs call 549-1231.
© Copyright 2007 Vernon Morning Star
Since the article, we've had such an amazing response. Anonymous people in our community, coming forward to show their support. A box of brand new books, a guitar and most amazingly, General Paint -offering to supply the paint to re-do our entire exterior! God is soooooo GOOD!!!
At the end of the day though, it's still about our guests -life change, people brought to Christ; to still hear that we've made a difference in their life -that's what it's all about.
