* The Homeless Angels *

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homeless in America, homeless Vets, homelessness, kindness, opportunity, The Homeless Angels, Who is my neighbor

NOTE: In search for practical applications of common basic human dignity and respect. What can one person do?

Why I Return to the Streets Each Year
to Help the Homeless

Eight years ago, I fell upon hard times and ended up homeless in Lansing, Mich., for six months of my life.

I was too ashamed to tell my family or friends when I lost my house so I didn’t ask for help. Instead, I lived in parking lots and tents with other people on the street. It’s definitely rough out there and there is a lot of mental illness and violence, but I also met people who weren’t much different from me. That really stuck with me. I also built great relationships and connections that I couldn’t break.

Three years ago, I decided to do something to help the people who were still out there. I spent a week in November 2010 walking the streets of Lansing, giving out blankets and coats, talking to people who didn’t have homes and sleeping outside with them. I shared the whole thing through posts, photos and videos on Facebook. I wanted people to see what homelessness really is.

I’ve continued to do this for a week in November every year since. I give people the knowledge to get off the streets and help them to go to a shelter. I want to provide a meal, I want to provide warmth, and I want provide a way for the public to see what the need is. There’s so much misunderstanding about what homelessness is and isn’t. I give people a window into the reality, while personally helping as many people on the streets as I can.

Building a relationship with the homeless is what I do… friendship is not a service that shelters offer but us angels make it a point to be there for our brothers and sisters!!
The is someone’s father,brother, son and at some point in there life they were loved.. We bringing that love back one person at a time!!

Each year that I’ve done this, more people in my network and the community have gotten involved. This year I went out from Nov. 11 to Nov. 17, and saved 25 souls from the streets of Lansing in seven days. I decided to keep the effort going with my buddy Jessep and start a non-profit: The Homeless Angels.

A local shelter has donated office space to us for our outreach to the homeless. Before Thanksgiving, we collected 400 bags of clothes and more than 75 complete meals for the needy. We also recently held a telethon to raise money for hotel rooms for homeless families. At the telethon, we had a Santa and Mrs. Claus there for kids, and we gave out nearly 400 new toys we collected. Thanks to community donations, we were able to place two families and two single people in hotel rooms for a month. We assign “angels” to each person or family that we help get off the streets. These angels help with basic needs and getting people where they need to go. Other people we help get into shelters.

Giving people kindness and opportunity is everything. I want people on the streets to know that there’s a huge group of people who care about them and are willing to do something to help. We’re going to keep getting more angels involved and one day I hope to expand to have chapters in other areas.

If you want to help The Homeless Angels or follow their efforts, visit Facebook.com/HomelessAngels.

I continue to go out at night after work at the General Motors Delta Plant and do whatever is possible to help. For one man, that was taking him for his first haircut in two years before he went to his brother’s funeral. For another, that was putting a call out on Facebook asking for size 11 boots and having a pair donated and delivered in under an hour.

Stunning VIDEO

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♫ Like a Rock ♫

Tags

Bob Seger, character, community-service, compassion, goodness, Helping others, homeless, integrity, kindness, Like a Rock, mentally ill, music, neighbors, service, stand, take stand, truth

Popular approval of Congress has reached an all time low as Americans reel under the vast scope of myriad scandals and lies perpetrated by this Administration. Yes! We have seen corruption before. Yes, we’ve been lied to before. Yes, we’ve even seen huge character flaws in our leaders before, but never … NEVER to the depth and scope to which we’re seeing today.

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Why? What has changed? What has happened to allow or facilitate such widespread corruption?

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Will a building stand if its foundation is compromised?

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Will a traveler reach his destination without first plotting his course & naming his destination?

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Can a nation long survive which has shredded its moral compass and floats aimlessly on sentimentalism?

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Perhaps innocently, perhaps with vile intent, social mores held firm throughout global civilizations over thousands of years, have suddenly (over the past few decades) come into question. GOD was declared dead April 8, 1966, and since that time, little by little, the once universal boundaries of Right & Wrong, have blurred. What was once, not more than generation ago, accepted behavior, has become “Old-fashioned” and “intolerant.”

Funny thing is, GOD is no place defined in our Founding documents, and the early Framers each held different personal beliefs. They intentionally kept all reference to GOD ambiguous so various individual beliefs might be adapted and accepted.

♫ Like a Rock ♫

• The point is CHARACTER.
• The point is GOALS … self-improvement … serving others.
• The point is standing for something bigger than yourself.
  The point is growing in personal integrity and service to the community… by choice, rather than by mandate.
• The point … is standing firm on some defined principles that are other aware.

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Without a firm foundation to stand on, the tides of political correctness too easily blow us around until we find ourselves … surrounded by Corruption. Like so many of our political leaders, bought and sold to the highest bidder, we, too, succumb to the popular trends and thoughts, victims of popular opinion.

How did we get here? We allowed it by our own compromise.

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Take a stand for GOODNESS
Take a stand for KINDNESS
Take a stand for TRUTH
Take a stand for COMPASSION
Take a stand for your Neighbor, for the Homeless, for the mentally infirmed … to be personally involved!

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Find something bigger than yourself worth STANDING FOR, worth giving your life’s passion to support, worth working toward and Take a Stand.

“We must stop acting like children.
We must not let deceitful people trick us by their false teachings,
which are like winds that toss us around from place to place.”
Eph 4:14 CEV

♫ Like a Rock ♫

Words and music by Bob Seger

Stood there boldly
Sweatin’ in the sun
Felt like a million
Felt like number one
The height of summer
I’d never felt that strong
Like a rock

I was eighteen
Didn’t have a care
Working for peanuts
Not a dime to spare
But I was lean and
Solid everywhere
Like a rock

My hands were steady
My eyes were clear and bright
My walk had purpose
My steps were quick and light
And I held firmly
To what I felt was right
Like a rock

Like a rock, I was strong as I could be
Like a rock, nothin’ ever got to me
Like a rock, I was something to see
Like a rock

And I stood arrow straight
Unencumbered by the weight
Of all these hustlers and their schemes
I stood proud, I stood tall
High above it all
I still believed in my dreams

Twenty years now
Where’d they go?
Twenty years
I don’t know
Sit and I wonder sometimes
Where they’ve gone

And sometimes late at night
When I’m bathed in the firelight
The moon comes callin’ a ghostly white
And I recall
I Recall …

Like a rock. standin’ arrow straight
Like a rock, chargin’ from the gate
Like a rock, carryin’ the weight
Like a rock

Like a rock, the sun upon my skin
Like a rock, hard against the wind
Like a rock, I see myself again
Like a rock