ROANOKE RAPIDS, N.C. (ABP) — After spending 24 hours among the poor and homeless in a "poverty plunge" in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., participants were tired, some were grieved but all felt the calm satisfaction of having done something that will change them for good.
Can that happen in 24 hours? Listen to a debriefing with those who went through it and you would be convinced.
While 150 people lined up early to get a 40-50 pound box of free food, Shana McReynolds, a hugger who wears a smile as constant as her glasses, mingled to put people at ease and to provide human touch in what can seem an inhuman process.
"I had to step out after a while," said McReynolds, a 911 dispatcher. "I'm not a crier, but I couldn't help it."
Margaret Harding, who coordinated the overnight event for North Carolina Woman's Missionary Union, took a chair in a quiet corner and prayed for every person going through the line.
LaCount Anderson, who directs the Union Rescue Mission of Roanoke Rapids which was distributing the food, called the room where people lined up to receive their vouchers "a holy place."
"When we started doing that, praying for people, the room changed," he said. "Don't ever discount that. When you're on mission, I suggest you have somebody assigned just to pray."
Even with prayer permeating the room, some actions prompted volunteers to scratch their heads, even to get riled.
Roxanne Lewis, who once lived on the streets herself, was sitting quietly when a woman who came for a box of free food told her, "Since you're sitting there doing nothing, how about you go find me some tissues?"
It was a lesson in humility and patience for Lewis, who swallowed hard and thought, "I'm not going to react to this. I don't know what kind of day she's had."
Anderson admitted that he reacts negatively when someone who has come for free food complains about the service.
But he realizes "they are not all going to be appreciative." Some will be rude but "we're not here to be thanked and loved. We're here to serve."
Aimee Day, administrative assistant for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia, suggested that rudeness in such situations may stem from their daily lack of self-determination. In a context where they can, they exercise their opportunity.
"We have self-determination," Day said. "We determine what is going to happen in our life every single day and they don't. For them to decline something or to be choosey is their expression of their limited self-determination. They have to be in control of something because they're not often in control of anything."
A servant's spirit does not keep those who serve from shaking their heads over the actions of people who understand "the system" and use it to maximum potential. Anderson was once lambasted by a lady who demanded access to the front of a long line of people waiting for food — because she was white and "deserves to be in the front."
A telephone caller once asked LaCount's wife, Anna, on staff at Rosemary Baptist Church in Roanoke Rapids, for help with her $75 water bill. Anna recognized that bill as abnormally high and asked the woman what might have caused the spike? "I don't know," the woman said. "My sister said maybe it's because we filled up the swimming pool."
But the more frequent need among the poor is simply food and a secure place to live.
Kimberly Walker, an ordained minister in Wallace, N.C., and divinity student at Campbell University, said her spirit was "grieved" following her 24 hours on the street. Churches are "so unlearned about poverty and I'm grieved at myself for being blind. We walk around so blind to people and my heart is just so overwhelmed at the love of God I've experienced here."
"This is real," she said. "I've got grief, but it's a good grief. I think God loves me enough to allow me the opportunity to be taught something I can take home and when I stand before my congregation tomorrow I can say I love you with a genuine love."
-30-
Norman Jameson is reporting and coordinating special projects for ABP on an interim basis. He is former editor of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder.
Read more New Voice stories:
• Plunge soaks participants in ways of poverty
• Poverty simulation begs middle class questions
• Poverty simulations have long history