“This is so wonderful,” Norma exclaimed with a wide smile. “It feels like Christmas.”
Norma and her two teenage boys have been living with various family members, in their vehicle, at cheap hotels, and unsheltered in encampments for the better part of the past three years. By any definition, they’ve been homeless. On this mid-January day, she was overwhelmed with excitement not only to be moving into a new apartment, but also to receive furniture from a joint effort of St. Martin’s Lutheran Church and Austin City Lutherans Move-In ministries.
Norma’s exuberance was heightened because she and her two sons endured a most difficult 2022. They are hoping for a much better 2023.
St. Martin’s has done more than 100 move-ins in the past seven years. A handful of church volunteers are led by Susan Jensen, Bob Daemmrich, and Tony Kegg. They have mostly served young adults transitioning to housing after aging out of foster care with Upbring, a social service agency with Lutheran roots. They’ve also assisted new migrants needing furniture through Refugee Services of Texas.
With Austin City Lutherans committing in 2022 to provide homelessness services, a natural alliance has formed with the St. Martin’s team – mentor and partner – to provide previously unhoused Austinites transitioning to new housing with furniture. ACL has partnership connections with other homelessness services providers in the city and the newly housed have an acute need to receive quality furniture at no cost.
Norma and her family are the sixth move-in recipients for ACL and St. Martin’s in our work together. For this specific move-in, ACL partnered with Sunrise Navigation Center and the Foundation for the Homeless in a two-week process. I received an initial inquiry email the first week of January from a Sunrise NC case manager, which eventually led to the move-in on a windy, but sunny mid-January morning. Couches, chairs, kitchen stools, dressers, pots and pans and other items made their way into Norma’s previously bare living space, a 3-bedroom apartment in SE Austin.
This past summer, Norma’s eighteen-year-old son, Carlos, was ejected from a window of a friend’s car as it flipped over a curb. The friend was driving too fast for conditions and didn’t negotiate a sharp turn. Carlos barely had a pulse when EMS technicians arrived on the scene of the wreck. He was immediately hospitalized and remained in a coma for close to three weeks.
“I told myself,” Norma said, “that God had him on a journey while the doctors worked on his body during his coma.” It was her best coping mechanism at the time; the doctors were preparing her for the possibility that her son wouldn’t walk or talk again.
Fortunately, after three months of hospitalization and additional months of physical and neurological therapy, Carlos has made a near full recovery. “I never lost my faith in God no matter how bad it looked,” Norma said.
The scar on Carlos’ neck from an emergency tracheotomy hints at the trauma that he, his mom, and his brother have been through these past few months. Luis, sixteen, had to drop out of high school this past fall.
But now they have an apartment. Norma will find work. Luis will go back to school. Carlos will attempt to get his GED. They’ll continue to be supported with case management through Foundation for the Homeless. And, they have furniture.
Once we moved all the furniture into the apartment, we gathered to say a prayer. We asked God’s blessing on the new living arrangement for Norma and her sons. They’ll need a lot of strength, faith, and support to make it.
Norma and her boys spent their first night in the apartment the same evening, sharing the couches and quilt blankets that were brought. (Another service provider is to deliver mattresses within days.)
The next morning, she told me that the happiness and joy the furniture and the volunteer movers brought her and her boys make her want to do all she can to succeed in this new venture.
St. Martin’s and ACL rely on donations of furniture in good shape and other household items to make these ministries hum. We need volunteers with pick-up trucks, trailers, or good backs. Or all three!
We store the furniture and connect with folks in need either through Bread For All Food Pantry, Mariposa FLC, or partnering homelessness service providers. This is a ministry that many folks can participate in – donating good furniture and household items, using your pick-up truck and/or trailer to pick up items and deliver them, supporting the work financially. Donations are accepted on this website.
Recently, the Triumphant Love Lutheran Endowment granted ACL $2,500 for the purpose of buying discounted (new) mattresses for the move-in effort. We are grateful and ask others to follow TLLC’s lead to support this important part of the move-in effort.
In the past year, I’ve heard people at ACL congregations say that they want to get involved and actually do something about homelessness in Austin. Thanks be to God, we’re finding our way! Rent assistance is a proven a homelessness prevention strategy, and furniture move-ins are a significant helping hand for persons making the transition from the streets to housing.
Join us at ACL’s upcoming 2023 Summit on Sunday, February 26 as we consider these efforts and others to best serve low-income individuals and families in the spirit of Jesus’ words from Matthew 25:40— “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”