The Power of First Impressions

The point of entry for most of our women is the emergency crisis shelter. They are welcomed into a warm, nurturing family-like atmosphere. One of our goals is to make each woman and child feel that they belong here because they are so accustomed to feeling that they don’t belong anywhere. The crisis shelter provides an opportunity for them to take a deep breath, clear their minds and help get started in a more positive direction.

In addition to providing shelter, we prepare and serve three meals a day, give clothing and necessary personal items, offer counseling and hold Christian chapel services twice daily.

Women come from a variety of situations, but one thing most have in common is something called disaffiliation – they aren’t connected to anyone or anything positive and they feel increasingly isolated in their struggles with issues such as homelessness, poverty, bad choices, depression, substance abuse or relational violence. They are:

• Mothers with school-age children and grandmothers caring for grandchildren.

• Single women who can’t make ends meet on one part-time job.

• Women escaping beatings by others and women who have given the beatings.

• Poor women on their way up and women of means on their way down.

• Women in tattered clothes who drink too much and women in business clothes who are addicted to prescription drugs.

They all meet here. There is no single nor simple path that leads them to this point, but most of them are glad they have arrived. We don’t often use the word “victim” at Evangel Home. We talk and teach about choice. Yet we understand that their crisis-to-crisis lifestyle offers few options. So we must help our women learn to develop options and take personal responsibility. They might be the one to break the bonds of generational chains.