During the month of October I stopped by the
Nashville Rescue Mission Hope Center downtown which is a women's shelter and
asked the director if there were any plans for the children for Halloween.
After she told me that they did not have anything planned I arranged for our
church bus to pick the mother's and children up and take them to our church fall
festival. I went down ahead of time and took my family and we wrote down what
each child wanted to dress up like and took their picture. I then collected
donations through friends and family to buy the children their costumes. We
went down there on Halloween night and loaded them all up and brought them to
church. I can't tell you how much fun these kids had. It was so good for them
to get out of their surroundings at the shelter and be able to enjoy being kids.
One little boy enjoyed it so much that when we were loading up the bus to take
them back I found him behind the bus by himself
crying and he finally told me that it was because he did not want to go back to
the shelter. It was heartbreaking.
Through that experience I met a girl named Candice who was staying at the
shelter at the time with her 2 small children. Her story really weighed on my
heart. I started the process of trying to see what I could do to get her out of
the shelter. She literally had no one in her life to help her. Even though I
had no clue what I was doing, I do not have enough room to explain the miracles
that fell into place for me to find her an apartment and get her out of the
shelter. After I found the apartment and worked out an arrangement with the
apt. manager to get her in all I needed was the money up front. I literally got
a call the next day out of the blue from someone I had never met who met Candice
at a Christmas event that her church, Fellowship Bible, hosted for the
mission women. Candice had given her my number and said that I was trying to
help her. She called and asked if there was anything she could do and I told
her all I was waiting on was the money to get her in the apt. We hung up and she called me back after she spoke with her husband and they
donated all the money plus paid her electric and water deposit. (Around $1000
total). It was amazing!! My sister then sent out an email to her sunday school
class at Brentwood United Methodist combined with my friends at Bethel, and my family, and within days she had her whole apartment furnished. I then took it upon myself
to teach her how to drive and took her to take her driver's test and she passed.
I prayed for that as if she was my child, partly because I'd been driving her
everywhere. There was even a couple that donated money to get her a car. She
then got set up on state daycare support, got two jobs and opened a checking
account for the first time.
But honestly the most amazing miracle of all was what she told me not long
after I'd started helping her. She said that at the time of the festival she
had just found out that she was pregnant again. The father to all three kids is
in jail, not scheduled to get out until late 2008. She had resolved to getting
an abortion because she felt she had no other option. She did not tell anyone that night that she was pregnant but it happens that she hung out with my friend
all night at the festival and for whatever reason she shared her story with Candice about starting out as a single mom and how God worked
everything out for her. Her story inspired Candice so much that she said that she decided that night that if God worked it out for my friend then maybe she could make it as well. She decided to keep the baby. The whole time my friend was sharing her story with Candice she never knew she was pregnant.
You see, many great things have come from just an idea to help some children have fun on Halloween night.
Many, Many thanks to all the many Ordinary Heroes involved in helping this mom and most importantly her little children.
To watch a video that documents the events surrounding the Halloween Outreach
