I received a call earlier in the week. I was told that no one at the bridge could take a shower because they were out of soap and towels. Calls kept coming into my voicemail about it.
My first response was to call the administration at the bridge and see if there was anything we could do to help. I left voicemail and email. Just in case, I went ahead and started making calls to find resources.
I called other homeless ministries, our leadership and local stores. Our own storage builing is empty, other ministries were running short and stores were just too expensive. And then I started to pray.

God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. And it might sound a little rural, but sometimes we need to ask him to sell some cows. He always provides us with what we need.

Calls kept coming in - no one could help with this short of notice. What were we going to do?

I kept praying.

The Lord brought to my mind the name of a man who we called last winter about blankets. (we buy and give a lot of blankets when it gets cold) I called him on a hunch and scored a supply of military canvas bags, foot powder, soap, and some tshirts- all for a really good price.
That supplier called me later to give me the name of a man who deals in used clothes. I called him and almost ran off of the road when he started to tell me how the Lord had really blessed him and he wanted to help in any way he could. (note to self- don’t make these kinds of calls while driving)
All of this was still happening at the latest possible moment.

Friday morning, we had zero resources. I got up early (that’s another miracle in itself) and drove to the supplier. I arrived at his office before he did. When he came in we spent an hour digging through boxes in an old warehouse. By the time I left I had purchased 500 canvas bags, tshirts, 300 foot powders, soap and shampoo.
On the drive back to Dallas I received a call that we would be getting 200 pounds of towels and about 400 pounds of tshirts - given to us at no cost.
I then had to rush to find transportation for all of the treasure!
By 4:00 Randy, Mark and I were sharing a pizza and trying to plan how we would organize and distribute everything.
I emailed everyone on our google group list and called a few specific volunteers.
At 5:20 we pulled into the bridge and grabbed a few people to help unload the bounty into a small room. Over the next two hours we packed the bags in an assembly line.
We finished packing the bags about 10 minutes prior to the time we had agreed to start with distribution.
Security helped line up the homeless men and women and we asked a few of them to assist with the handing out the bags.
Friday morning we had no resources. By Friday evening we had distributed over 400 of these care packages and gave the bridge almost 100 extra for storage. (plus about 100 tshirts for future use) The kits that we distributed contained a reuseable canvas bag, 2 tshirts, a ball cap, soap, foot powder and most importantly- a towel.

Someone asked me where we got everything. I told him that we prayed over a few bars of soap and tshirts and God provided the rest.

(ps. I had some really awesome pictures- that I ignorantly lost)

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