Making a Difference with an Eager Heart like His
By Mari Roll©

”He has showed you, O man, what is good.
       And what does the LORD require of you?
       To act justly and to love mercy
       and to walk humbly with your God.”

Micah 6:8

This verse has touched my heart since the first time I read it.   It is what I refer to as my “mantra” and I have it engraved on the cover of the Day Timer to remind me and anyone else who happens to see it what life is about to me as I work to bring a better life to women and children seeking shelter from the storms in life.   This month, this special month we set aside for thanks and for giving,   I want to share with you the story of what one man really can do to make life better for those in need.

What can one person do to make a change in the life of another?   A lot…   I'd like to introduce you to Pastor Dan, his lovely wife Ruth, and subsequently his congregation, and what they did to change the lives of the many women and children seeking safety in a confidential domestic violence shelter.  

Sitting in my office, at the confidential domestic violence shelter, where I served as the director, I heard my name being called.   I found, Anna, one of the shelter advocates, standing at my office door telling me there was an unknown man outside the front door asking to talk to someone in charge.   I immediately went to the front door and through the speaker box, informed the man he needed to leave and that 911 had been called, and the sheriff would be arriving any moment to arrest him.   

At a confidential shelter, security is everything.   The women and children living in the shelter are there because their homes are not safe.   Their husbands and/or partners are trying to harm if not kill them, and they have fled to the shelter to be safe and learn how to live safely.   I am ultimately responsible for their safety while they live in this shelter.  

When they come to the shelter they are not allowed to tell their families, friends, employers, churches, or schools where they are.   In other words they can tell no one where they are going or where they are living once they arrive.   Imagine what it would be like to walk out of your life into the complete unknown, but knowing the unknown has to be better and certainly safer than the life you're living right now, today?   This is what women fleeing violent homes do; they leave everything they know behind to begin new; to begin safe.    

Our shelter has a security system and a screen shows us everyone standing at the front door.   After speaking to the gentleman at the front door and instructing him to leave, I was not really surprised when he didn't move.   He stood there and proceeded to tell me who he was.   He said he was the pastor at the church down the road and he wanted to know what he could do to help.   Again, I told him he needed to leave, but he refused until I told him what he could do to help and how he could contact me.   I instructed him to go stand out on the road and wait for the sheriff then I would come and talk to him.   The sheriff arrived and after they checked his I.D. and agreed we were safe, they escorted me out to the road to meet him.    Believe me it's not that I think I'm so important as to deserve all this treatment, but I am responsible for the safety of the women, children and my staff inside the shelter, and I appreciate the fact that the sheriff also takes our safety so seriously.  

Later that same afternoon I walked down to the church, on the corner and met with the pastor and his wife, thinking to myself along the way, “what on earth can they do to help?”    I really had no idea what to tell him.   On the one hand there was a lot he could do to help, but reality has shown us time and again that most people would rather write a check than get personal with our clients.  

Pastor Dan and his wife Ruth were two of the kindest people I have had the privilege to meet.   They began as a home church 10 years ago, and as their families grew in numbers and as teenagers grew into adults and married, and began families of their own they soon outgrew homes to meet in, so they collected and saved enough money to buy this church building.   They had been here for 2 years now, and many of the women from the shelter walked over to church on Sundays.  

He told me they were a small church of about 100.   He told me that many of the women attend church there on Sundays, and while most come in late and leave early, also known as the anonymity syndrome , some of them stay to talk to him and his wife after services.   He knew, from the women, that we were a confidential domestic violence shelter and after meeting some of the women and children they felt a strong connection and wanted to help.   We talked a while about a few things, and as I was leaving we passed by a box of Bibles.   Pastor Dan explained these were “lost and found” Bibles that people have left behind and never retrieved, and he asked if I'd like to take them back to the shelter, and I told him I'd be happy to.   I left them with a couple of forms to be filled out regarding security and confidentiality at the shelter.   When I left them that afternoon I had no idea what to expect in terms of ever seeing them again.  

The next day Pastor Dan and Ruth arrived at the shelter front door with their forms completed and two more boxes of Bibles.   They found a few more boxes of older Bibles in the church and decided donating them to the shelter was a wonderful way to use them.   Ruth helped me place them on the bookshelf in the dining room, and I didn't think any more about the Bibles until an advocate brought them up at our weekly staff meeting.    Honestly, when I saw that “Bibles” had been added to the agenda I had prepared, I was slightly annoyed, thinking my staff were going to complain about the Bibles being in the shelter, and that we were not being politically correct and offering other faith based reading materials such as The Book of Mormon or The Quran .   Wrong and never have I been so happy to be wrong.    My staff had added the Bibles to the agenda because the women who didn't get a Bible were complaining, and they wanted one.   WOW!

After the staff meeting I went back to the advocate's office, and glancing down the street I could see the lights on at the church, so I dug out the pastor's card and called.   He answered and I told him that the Bibles were gone and some of the women were disappointed that they hadn't received one, and did he have any more he could bring over?    He didn't but he would see what he could do.   Two days later he called and wanted to meet with me.   Again, he arrived with his wife carrying boxes of Bibles.   Pastor Dan and Ruth had gone to several other churches in the area, told them of the need for Bibles and collected all their “lost and found” Bibles to bring to us.   Can you imagine a better use for these Bibles left behind?

As the shelter director I am beginning to get a little worried at this point that maybe I should have some other faith based reading materials on the shelf.    As the director I must consider the needs of all our clients, and the last thing I want is for a client to be upset and accuse me of not respecting her religious freedoms.   So, I call around and I am able to get The Book of Mormon sent to us, and a copy of The Quran .   The Bibles disappear as fast as we put them out—literally every woman takes one and gives them to her children too, and to this day we cannot keep up with the need.  

Pastor Dan was soon telling me that he had called a meeting with his elders and deacons and they unanimously agreed to adopt the shelter and to do whatever they could to help the women and children. It was at this point that I had the “facts of life” conversation with Pastor Dan about what volunteering here really meant, and that it wasn't always a nice, fun place to be.   That the women and children living here had come from horrific home conditions and there was a lot of acting out, and a lot of language they may not like hearing.   I also told him volunteering here would be a little more complicated than he might realize, beginning with the reality that we would need to run background/security checks on anyone coming to the shelter.   He left with the stack of forms for members to fill out, and vowed to be back with them in two days.   I was the doubting Thomas and assured him that we would be happy with whoever came back with him.

It wasn't long before this little congregation was completely immersed in volunteering.    In addition to making sure our shelves were never without Bibles, the youth from the church would have pizza night inviting the shelter teens to come to the church on a Friday night for an evening of fun watching wholesome movies and playing games, and most importantly for a time to be able to leave the shelter for a few hours and have fun being a teenager.   You have no idea how important these nights came to be for not only the teens, but for the moms too to be able to have an evening ‘off'.    Once a month the church would cook dinner at the shelter and have a cookie decorating party with the children.   They would sit and eat with the women, talking to them and most of all listening to them tell their stories.   The one thing they could do with the clients that the staff couldn't do was pray with them, and pray they did.   

The men in the church took it upon themselves to work on the cars some of the women owned; cars that were literally on their last leg.    We would have women coming into this shelter from million dollar homes, driving beautiful European cars, yet under the hood of these cars was junk that wouldn't run.   Abusers do not want their wives/girlfriends driving cars that they may be able to escape in, so the cars are not kept up even with a basic oil change.   The men at this church took on the task of making sure the cars were in good running order, and if new tires were needed, they bought new tires; pretty much replacing anything needing replacing.  

After they had been volunteering for a few months, the pastor and his wife came to talk to me about offering pastoral counseling to the women.   I told him that to do that he would really need to understand domestic violence and in order to really understand it he would need to take the training, which is 50 hours.   Knowing how many hours pastors already work in a week, in addition to his full time carpet laying business, I fully expected him to bow out of that one, but he didn't.   In fact not only did he and his wife take the training, he had a dozen church members sign up too.    This little church really was a gift to us from God.

The first summer they were there, they made sure the kids had things to do, such as attending their Vacation Bible School ; they paid for several of the children to take swimming lessons and even sent one young teen to YMCA camp.   Using our shelter van we were able to take the kids to a nearby lake and the church provided the BBQ.   Some of these children had a real summer for the first time in their lives.   In August, as folks were getting ready for school to begin they made sure all the kids had new backpacks, new shoes and several of the women took the moms and kids shopping at Target to get everyone at least one new outfit to start school with.   When this group committed to adopting the shelter they trusted God to provide them with a way to do it.   I have worked in domestic violence for 30 years and I had never met a group of volunteers like this.

Through the kindness of this one little church we have been adopted by several other churches in the area of the shelter.   The pastor graciously passed my name and number on to other pastors in his ministerial association and they in turn would call and invite me to speak to a Sunday school or Bible study group, or during their ‘moment for missions' during worship.   The out pouring of love that has come from this connection is amazing, and it is a huge God thing!

One Bible study group prepares baskets that greet each family as they move in— pretty little things for mom and the kids to help them feel special.   Another group makes quilts that we present to each family when they leave the shelter moving into their own home—something beautiful for them to see every day to remind them how far they have come.   Another church has completely taken over the backpack project and making sure we always have enough for every child coming into shelter.   Another Bible study comes every Christmas to bake and decorate holiday cookies.   Another group has come every Thanksgiving for the last 5 years to cook a huge dinner for the women and to eat with them—it has become the tradition for these volunteer families.   Another group provides tutoring services 3 afternoons a week to help the kids with homework and for many of them to get caught up in school.   Another group comes once a week to do arts and crafts with the kids, and the moms.   Another group comes and does knitting with the moms and another comes to do make- overs including hair, make-up, and clothes (they call ahead to find out what sizes they need to bring and then they all sort through their own closets.)   It really is amazing to see what one can do for so many in need ; Making a difference in the lives of the women and children; Making a Difference with an Eager Heart Like His.

“My heart is with Israel 's princes,
       with the willing volunteers among the people.
       Praise the LORD!”

Judges 5:9

Blessings, Mari

To contact Mari: sweepingmari@comcast.net