Cold Weather Shelter Updates and Thanks

St. Matthew’s served as the site for the county cold weather shelter in Hillsborough for the month of

November. The shelter was open for 4 nights during this time including 3 nights over the Thanksgiving holiday. No guests showed up to use the shelter during that time. There are ongoing efforts to get information to those who might benefit. Possible reasons why it hasn’t been used yet include: difficulty for people finding their way to our fellowship hall, it’s a new program to Hillsborough, the site shifting between two locations and the recently warm weather perhaps delaying people in seeking shelter from cold weather.

This period of time did give us time to “practice” the process of opening and closing the shelter including coordinating with other uses of the fellowship hall, coordination with county personnel over notification procedures, managing food donations and scheduling people to serve food. It is good to have this practice time.

Many thanks are due: to those who prepared food and showed up to serve, to those who donated items for the personal hygiene kits and to Daughters of the King to assembling the kits; to the Shawl Ministry for crocheting/knitting absolutely beautiful and warm hats. Several king-sized comforters were donated to the county last year but were unusable due to the size. Thanks to Carolyn Carlson who divided and sewed up two of those comforters creating 4 cot-sized comforters. Thanks to Will Lee for shepherding and facilitating the adult forum and for lending his consultation/experience. Thanks to Nancy Rosebaugh who “hit the streets” distributing flyers and talking to local merchants and others in contact with those living unsheltered.

From December 1-13, Hillsborough Presbyterian Church will serve as the shelter site. It is hoped that people in need will be able to find that location more easily and that other procedures might be put in place to help folks be able to access this necessary service. By the time St. Matthew’s serves again from December 14-31 st , we hope that the shelter might be accessible and used. Hillsborough Presbyterian Church will serve again for the months of January and February and St. Matthew’s will wrap up the season for the month of March.

Help Wanted:

1. If you cooked food and placed it in the church freezer for use at the shelter, first of all-

THANKS! But please let Ellen McRae (919-630-0587; emcrae75@gmail.com) know if you did

this. There seems to be a wonderful supply in the freezer but much of the food has not been

labelled as being for the shelter so it cannot be used in case it belongs for some other

purpose. Please help with sorting this out so that the food can be put to its proper use!

2. If you want to provide food or serve food, please contact Ellen McRae to find out how to sign

up rather than put food into the church freezer.

3. And thank you—it always amazes me how readily and generously the parish responds when

given information on needs around us. As a parish, we do find ways to live into our mission.

(Special thanks to Ellen McRae for this update and for her incredible time and dedication to making this possible)