Peace, Love & Hygiene: Vol. 125-

My theme for this report is- Harvest. This is the season of the harvest. This applies to life, not just to farmers. In the winter, we dream. We grow ideas and plans for the coming year. The spring we set up. We prepare a fertile ground for ideas to grow in. Then summer is work. We are working that harvest. We watch it grow, we tend to droughts, the floods, and protect our dream from any invaders. 

Then finally, September, the harvest. We reap what we have sown. If we have done our job well, there will be much more to do. Work and reward are symbiotic. Then when all has been gathered, picked, canned, and cured, we rejoice! We shall feast, enjoy, and replenish. Then, come winter, we begin again.

The winter of Magdalene’s Mission was the seed implanted in my head back when I came up with the idea to collect purses packed with hygiene items and a small snack, then I would pass them out to homeless women.

Our spring was when we were The Valentine’s Day Purse Project for a few years.I didn’t have a Farmer’s Manual for this crop. I just had a Bible. In it, Jesus laid out perfectly how to set this up. 

If you remember, I went out to Detroit with Traci one night in winter to help with street outreach. We were witness to the real work that needed to be done. That was the first day of summer for Magdalene’s Mission.

Magdalene’s Mission was in a season of summer for the next 4 years.We worked and it grew, so we worked it and it grew. Then we needed more hands. And the crop just got so big I couldn’t even keep it in my field anymore! I prayed. “Help me! I will drown and this will all be for naught!”

Then the money ran out for the storage unit. Then my basement foundation cracked and water poured in and ruined the hygiene area. Then I wept. I very nearly gave up.The mission was starving.

Yesterday, August 29, 2024, became the first day of Autumn for Magdalene’s Mission. Our harvest season has finally arrived. Fort Street Presbyterian Church on Fort St. in downtown Detroit has allowed us to rent a part of their facilities. This is a perfect fit. 

I’ll have plenty of clothing racks, shelves and cubbies to store all of our clothes, hygiene, and extras. 

Every Monday, from 9a -5p, I will be there sorting and packing. Hopefully that means you, too. Or any other group, or team, or whatever, because there are several large tables available in the space the size of a gymnasium for working at. I have permission. There is a large secure parking lot. It’s wonderful. It’s better than I even prayed for.

Now it is September. Tomorrow morning will be the official equinox. God even lined up the stars, planets, and the moon for this.

Here’s the work left so we can get to harvesting the dream of having Magdalene’s Mission in its own base in Detroit: 

1. I need trucks and vans. I have to get everything out of the storage unit, what’s left in my garage and my basement, and get it down to Detroit.
2. I need help organizing all the stuff into its place once we get it down there.
3. I need $50 a month for use of the space.

Sounds easy enough? I am ready to go!

Message me if you have a truck and a little time. The bank account is down to $20 and I don’t know where another $115 that will come out on the 3rd is. I’m not sure how I’m going to buy bread to give to Wen on Monday to make sandwiches for Tuesday. No idea.

Actually, someone donated an old car to me that I could scap. Anyone have a tow bar I can borrow? I could get a few hundred for it.

I would put the money up myself, but Jet’s Pizza in Hartland is still closed. Thank Serv-Pro of Flint for the most diabolically horrible job at anything I have ever witnessed. It’s been a nightmare since the Jets burned down NINE MONTHS AGO!

I digress… This is the Harvest Season. We will take the bounty of our donation harvest, prepare it for the coming winter, then be set.

Fort Street Presbyterian Church can hardly wait to come aboard and join our mission. I believe God approves of this mission and our work. I am proud of us humans because:

Approved

Workman

Are

Not 

Ashamed

We are not ashamed to love on our desperate homeless friends. We are not ashamed to bring light into the darker parts of the world. We are the flashlight at the bottom of the hole. Let me show you where the ladder is. Every pair of hands, every heartfelt donation, are the batteries that keep the light on.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit.

Amen.

The photo is from December 15, 2020 when Traci and I were working out of a bedroom in my basement. We’re getting ready for Tuesday night, packing purses. We didn’t even know how much we didn’t know then. Wait until you see how far we’ve come.