If your bed is covered in snow, you’ll never get warm

Michael only spent two nights on the streets last winter.

“No matter what you’re wearing, you can never stay warm,” he said. “The cold gets through whatever you’ve got on . . . and I had a jacket, sweatshirt, pants and boots.”

Those two days, Michael slept in a downtown park on snow-covered ground with nothing but a light jacket to keep warm. “You don’t know what’s going on around you so you’re afraid to shut your eyes,” he remembers. “I got maybe two hours sleep each night.”

“I didn’t know where to start but I knew I had to start somewhere.”

The Mission Was a Godsend

One night, the cold simply got to be too much and Michael got on a bus to keep warm. While he was riding around town, he struck up a conversation with a stranger — who told him about the Union Gospel Mission.

“I was broke, ashamed of my situation and felt like I had been a bad father to my kids,” he says. “I didn’t know where to start but I knew I had to start somewhere.”

“Coming to Union Gospel Mission was a godsend,” he says.

On The Path to a New Life

No longer having to worry about what he would eat or where he would sleep allowed him to focus on the other things he needed in his life — like healing from a messy divorce, and getting his kids back. Now he’s in our Discipleship Program, where he’s learning what it means to have a relationship with God.

Not everyone who comes into the Mission this winter is chronically homeless or battling addiction. Some have just fallen on hard times, and need help to get back on their feet. That’s what a hot meal and care from the Mission can do: restore hope, and start someone down the path to a new life.