PUB

It was in a jail cell that Pam decided to change her life. She had been picked up by the police for prostitution. That night, Pam said the Lord changed her and she decided to put her life back together.

Pam had been living on the streets for almost a decade before that night in prison. During those years she ate at Beautiful Feet, a ministry in Fort Worth, Texas that serves the homeless.

“When you live on the streets, you go where the food is,” she said.

Pam is now the kitchen manager at Beautiful Feet and helps feed the homeless every day.

Beautiful Feet was started by Mike Meyers and Johnny Buckner in 1981. The two men were students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary when they began bringing coffee and donuts to a group of homeless men who had been sleeping in the Fort Worth Water Gardens. Soon, they not only brought breakfast, they brought the Gospel. They began holding worship services in the Water Gardens. In 1986, the ministry moved from the Water Gardens into its current location, a large brick building with three cobalt blue front doors on East Hattie Street.

The homeless line up outside these doors until they are opened twenty minutes before the meal. They enter and sit down at long mismatched tables with a medley of folding chairs crammed side-by-side and pulled slightly away from the tables, appearing to form long benches. The white room is filled with inspirational Christian posters, a street light, a mounted trout, and a sign that says, “Danger: Men Cooking.” Two large windows look into the kitchen where volunteers are hard at work preparing the next meal.

Pizza Hut donated the meal the night I volunteered. Over 25 pizza boxes were emptied as we put the pizza on trays, sprayed them with water and then re-heated them in the oven. The donated pizzas seem to have been too burnt to sell- but still edible- or were left over from the restaurant at the end of the workday.
Stacks of cardboard boxes filled with bananas line the back room behind the kitchen. We place bananas on top of the long tables for anyone to either eat immediately or take with them for later. As people walk into the dining room, some grab a bunch of bananas off the table and stuff them into their bags.

Men and women trickle into the dining room. A man with a long ponytail and a hearing aid sits down at a long table, at the end closest to the kitchen. He stuffs a bunch of bananas into his backpack and pulls another bunch of bananas close to him, popping one off and opening the leathery yellow skin. As he eats his banana, he closely watches the other men and women, all lugging bags and jackets. He pulls his hearing aid out of his ear and places it on the table.

Beautiful Feet is one of 25 ministries in the Fort Worth area that serves the homeless. According to the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition, homelessness in Fort Worth has increased since 2009, mostly as a result of unemployment. There were 2,243 homeless people on any given day in Tarrant County in 2011.

One homeless man was given the opportunity to tell his own story in the 2006 memoir, Same Kind of Different as Me. The memoir brought a personalized reality to homelessness in Fort Worth by giving explicit details of life jumping trains, riding to the different American hobo jungles and living on the streets of Fort Worth. The book is about Ron Hall, a wealthy art dealer who agrees to volunteer at the Union Gospel Mission. There he met Denver Moore, a homeless man who had recently escaped from a job that could be considered equivalent to modern-day slavery. Hall and Moore became friends and their relationship produced what is now a best-selling book. Moore worked passionately for the shelter and his hard work paid off: in 2006, Fort Worth honored Moore as a “Philanthropist of the Year” for his work at the shelter.

Each year the Union Gospel Mission provides over 200,000 hot meals for men, women, and children in need of food. Services for the homeless include emergency care as well as programs for women and children. They provide not only meals but also shelter for many of the homeless who come to the Mission. Jeff came to the Mission after his car, which had become his home after he lost all his savings to the economy and alcohol, caught fire and burned. When Jeff arrived at Union Gospel Mission, he was surprised with how much he liked it.

“I was shocked,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘this is really, really nice.’ The food was good. All I had to do was work with my caseworker and carry out the duties I was given to earn my keep. I was happy, you know?”

Jeff chose to take part in the WorkForce program, which provides the homeless with opportunities to further their education and reach their career goals by offering classes and programs that will aid in the progression of a career. The Union Gospel Mission makes an effort to help everyone who enters the shelter leave it with new hopes and new goals. Thirteen percent of the homeless population actually have jobs but are not able to afford a home. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, for a minimum-wage earner to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment, he or she would have to work almost 90 hours a week. The Mission tries to fulfill the need of housing families in need who cannot afford to pay for a one-bedroom apartment. 4,000 people each year are helped by the mission with housing, unemployment and overcoming addictions.

“It’s almost like starting over but I don’t have to start over by myself,” Jeff said. “I can see myself getting on my feet and really doing something…being a completely different person. [They]’re giving someone a second chance, to see life in a way that perhaps they’ve never looked at life before—in a good way. People will thank  [the mission] for the rest of their lives.”

Robert, his wife Sunshine, and their two children came to the mission after they had to move out of Robert’s aunt’s house. The landlord had threatened to raise the rent because there were so many people in the home so Robert and Sunshine moved out and headed to the Mission. Soon after arriving, they both began developing life skills they never learned when they were growing up.

“I’m learning to talk to my children,” Sunshine said. “Being here helped me stay on the right track.” The Mission, Beautiful Feet, and other shelters in Fort Worth have helped countless families like Sunshine and Robert put their lives back together.

Steve tells me has been volunteering at Beautiful Feet for a year and a half now, as we scrape pizza off of hot baking sheets and into serving pans. He comes on Friday nights to feed and minister to the homeless. Tonight’s ministry is a movie night in the sanctuary where the volunteers and the homeless will watch “Courageous,” a Christian movie. There are more volunteers than needed so after Steve and I scrape the last of the pizza into the pans, I fill a pitcher with iced tea and go into the dining room to refill cups. There are mostly men in the dining room this evening. One family with three children waves me over to fill their cups.

Kenny was brought to Beautiful Feet after getting beat up outside of the bar where he had been drinking. The white Beautiful Feet van pulled up and shone a light on Kenny and his attackers. The other men thought the van was with the police and ran off. The volunteers in the van took Kenny back to the shelter and put him into detox.

“The majority of the people that come here—most of them are just down on their luck,” Kenny said. “Some are alcoholics, some drug addicts, lot of people have apartments, but it’s the end of the month now. All the aid people get from the government—that’s run out now. We’re very dependent on places like this to make it from day to day.”

How dependent the homeless are on shelters reflects the further decline of the economy. Unemployment and an inability to pay rent or a mortgage are the most common causes of homelessness. Family homelessness is increasing across the United States and shelters are being forced to accommodate this increase by further developing ministries for children who are victims of homelessness. The homeless in Fort Worth are not all alcoholics, prostitutes, criminals, or drug addicts. They are victims of bad circumstance, a dismal economy, or an unfortunate upbringing. Shelters like the Union Gospel Mission and Beautiful Feet provide hope for those who struggle and need assistance for a better life.

“When you’re out here, not knowing what you’re gonna do the next day is a trip,” Kenny said. “Something comes your way—you just do it. If you don’t, you just thank God you’re livin’ and keep on going.”