Manna News

Poverty has a cost. The cost of poverty is witnessed physically, mentally, spiritually, materially, relationally, and environmentally. The web-site Homeless Hub [shorturl.at/kEKRU. April 4, 2022] outlines one in seven Canadians live in financial insecurity costing our health, social services, and policing services $72-84 Billion annually. The Homeless Hub also chronicles that one in five households pay more than 50% of earnings on housing. A growing number of Canadians are slipping below the poverty line, while an increasing number of seniors are facing the challenge to purchase food or medicine daily. Inflation is never a friend to those who live pay cheque to pay cheque.

As summer is approaching, many BC communities worry about the arrival of “Shopping Cart People.” Some say, “It’s an eye-sore to see abandoned shopping carts piled with discarded junk and THOSE PEOPLE.” Physically they may be messy and mentally they are often handicapped or dealing with undiagnosed disabilities. These are the easily identified examples of community poverty and the solution is often to move them down the road to the next community. There is no easy solution.

But, the more difficult examples of poverty that pay a heavy price by our society are hidden. Examples include: the spiritual cost of depression and anxiety resulting in an increase of suicide and overdoses in all age groups, particularly Boomers; the breakdown of relationships resulting in an increase in single family and child poverty; the inner disillusionment that leads to disregard for dropping personal trash, cigarette butts, or food wrappers. We all suffer at times from the forces that enable poverty.

The answer, I believe, is not the one presented by the Homeless Hub organization and their desire for greater government intervention with supports. Yes, it takes a willing government to implement policies in keeping with the values of its citizenry, but policies will never be fully implemented and money will always be misspent. So what is really necessary are individuals willing to pause long enough to know the name of the person ‘panhandling’ beside the road, to pick up the odd piece of trash from time to time, and to connect with someone you haven’t seen for a while.

For Manna, we believe our friends are important, so we seek to demonstrate the traits of value, honour, compassion, acceptance, and worth through the practice of listening to someone’s story, never judging or blaming, offering access to the resources Manna has to those we know about in our community, and asking a simple question, “How are you?” – And actually meaning it.

I’m not trying to be “preachy.” We don’t need more platitudes in our life. We also can’t wait for the government to “fix it.” I’m convinced solutions begin when I think, “How can I better understand what is going on here and how to best listen to learn?”

The City Council of Parksville has had a checkered relationship with Orca Place at 222 Corfield. Since its inception, I’ve been invited to provide Community Chaplain Support for those living at Orca. This has been a rewarding practice. I’ve been able to drop in for two breakfast periods each week. I’ve helped residents with two “Celebrations of Life” and the process of losing friends. We’ve celebrated birthdays, recovery anniversaries, and new jobs. And I’ve heard life stories – victories and challenges, lessons learned – I’ve appreciated the wisdom gleaned from their experience.

Orca Place is a wonderful example that combines a supportive community with individuals willing to risk transformation. Sobriety can be scary. Medicated normality can be threatening. Replacing inner chaos with calmness is often an experience that requires constant adjustments to a “New Normal.” Thankfully the success of Orca Place is evidenced in changed lives – examples of health, happiness, and feelings of hope found in many who live there.

There is a popular expression, “You’re never too old to learn.” So maybe there is hope for me learning Pickle Ball. With Manna, we’ve been applying this adage forever. Each year, we’ve been approached by local schools to assist with needs witnessed in the families whose children attend them. Through the generousity of our community, we’ve been able to supply children’s coats, gloves, and toques, breakfast and lunch supplies, food coupons and specialized assistance. In one school this year, we’ve been able to help provide over 100 weekly meal supplies – fruit cups, soup cups, breakfast bars, KD cups – and additional help with their weekend “Backpack Food Program,” by offering soups, peanut butter, chili, pasta with sauce, and granola bars. In another school, we were able to offer QF coupons for a family suddenly unemployed and nearly homeless. This has been possible from the continual support we receive from our community – Thank you!

‘Casey’ was a tradesman who moved to Oceanside in November from out-of-province and found a camping spot at Rathtrevor. He told me, ‘This is home. I grew up in Parksville as a kid and now I’m moving back to be closer to family.” But his family was skeptical. Casey had used drugs, abused alcohol, drifted, lost jobs, and become homeless. Casey’s trade was as a bricklayer and carpenter. He’d been ‘dry’ for a couple of months and was now trying to start on a new path.

Manna was able to help provide some articles for his campsite – camp stove, fuel, flashlight, sleeping bag, tarp, mattress, and we even had a frying pan to give him along with cans of stew and soup. I spent about an hour talking with Casey encouraging him to keep going on this new path of courage and I hoped to see him again at the Soup Kitchen. Sadly, he never showed. When I went back to his campsite, his tent was gone with all his stuff. I haven’t seen Casey since the end of November.

I’m not sure what happened to him.  I just know that sometimes the challenge to change is overwhelming. It isn’t easy ‘going clean’. “Just get clean,” we hear so many say. It’s not like changing socks. Getting clean means a shift in identity; it means confronting the ‘voices’; it means confronting the internal chaos once the external chaos is controlled; and it means becoming vulnerable and saying “I need your help.” Homeless people often ‘take’ our stuff – the food, clothing, sleeping bag, tarp – we offer, not because they ‘need help’ but because they are in crises and chaos – they are in ‘survival mode.’

When you see piles of stuff on shopping carts or piles of stuff beside the road – you see someone who is suffering, often lonely, always fearful, in chaos, usually with mental health concerns around addictive issues, often physically sick with untreated wounds, and always with a poor self-image – feeling unloved, unnoticed, unwelcome, and forgotten.

We can help! We don’t need to ‘save the world’ – we just need to show honour, respect, acceptance, love, and compassion to someone when they welcome us into their life, trust us with their story, and allow us to comfort them so they can find the courage to live freed from the chaos that controls them and more with the Peace and Love that God can provide. 

Our hearts have gone out to the hundreds of people stranded because of floods and mud slides. Thousands of people have demonstrated the ‘Spirit of BC’ – generous care and support in time of crises – a place for shelter, warm food, showers, washing clothes, counseling, grief support; in times of need, the people of BC are generous and caring.

Now those who suffered must not be forgotten – shelter will still be needed while homes are repaired or rebuilt; food will need to be delivered along with drinkable water; grief support will be vital; and communities will need the encouragement to restart.

The reality of seasonal crisis is terrible for all who suffer. No one deserves to live in their car; go without food; be cold; or when the crisis is over and the media goes home – be forgotten and alone. The unfortunate reality, as demonstrated from the past study of the Williams Lake fires, is that some will become homeless through this event.

Every week, Manna Homeless Society serves individuals forgotten and alone as the result of a past crisis:

• A work related injury, too young to retire, no pension, no relief from pain except through medication [sometimes, self-administered]
• A ‘reshuffling of resources’ – ‘downsized’, fired – after years of dedication, but without skills necessary for the ‘transition’
• An escape from a childhood of abuse or drug influenced home
• Uneducated; undiagnosed mental health issues; violent for self-protection
• Generational poverty and without hope

For every person we serve, we hear a unique story of pain, loneliness, and grief of a life lost.

But, this past week’s news of BC’s ‘state of emergency’ has revived my hope. The people of BC are a generous, caring, compassionate community concerned for those who suffer traumatic crisis.

And so, I come to you, encouraged by past examples of compassionate care, to ask for a seasonal consideration of support for our Manna friends who continue to linger with the trauma of crisis from the past.

I know that Christmas is often the season when you are asked to consider numerous requests for additional support.

So let me help frame your consideration;

First – care for the friends, family members, and people in your immediate circle of relationship; if anyone you know is in need, help that person feel loved, accepted, treasured.

Second – your participation in a Faith Community, join with their programs of seasonal compassionate care and help those in need to recognize the love found in a common community.

Third – when looking to expand your generousity into Oceanside; helping children have lunch supplies [at Springwood Elementary]; providing seniors, families, and disabled individuals with food for the weekends; offering additional donated items of clothing, sleeping bags, tarps, socks, boots/shoes; and providing a place of acceptance, encouragement, and love – consider Manna Homeless Society.

1. Please consider a cash donation. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we have responded to individual requests for additional food, from seniors, families, disabled individuals – all vulnerable and in need. QF Warehouse allows us to order wholesale supplies, so your cash donation is literally multiplied in effectiveness.
2. Please consider a ‘Christmas Stocking’ – a pair of warm socks stuffed with toothpaste/brush, hand warmers, chocolates, deodorant, comb/brush, razor, pen, maybe a surprise ‘treasure’ [no money please].

Donations can be mailed to:
Manna Homeless Society
Box 389, Errington, BC, V0R 1V0

You can drop off your donations on Wednesday at the Manna van parked near the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen [across from the Parksville Fire Hall].

And you can call – 250-607-7142 and coordinate a time for a pick-up.

Thank you for your partnership with Manna, and your concern for the vulnerable in our community,

Thanks,

Jerrold

Manna Homeless Society,

Community Chaplain

• We have a shortage for tooth brushes and toothpaste
• Cooler weather means we need more pants, long sleeve shirts, hoodies
• Boots and shoes are in dire need [we have three men needing size 13-14]

‘What about food?’ – you may ask – our partnership with Quality Food Warehouse allows us to purchase wholesale case lots and they often donate extra!! So for your cost to donate 2-3 cans of stew; Manna can purchase 4-6 cans with those same equivalent funds.

We’ve been offering food supplies from the Manna Van every Wednesday at the soup kitchen since Covid restrictions made our regular Saturday distribution difficult to maintain. This has resulted in a steady supply of groceries but a reduction in the ability to provide a sense of ‘community’. This spring we also began to have regular stops at the Smithers RV park – and increased our visits from once a month to weekly.

 I’m not sure about involving other groups with sandwiches/soup at this time – I will hold off on that offer until regulations are totally lifted, and the ownership welcomes us coming with more people and resources..

I was reminded last week of Friends of Manna who perished during this pandemic isolated season. In Smithers RV park, I was told that about 9 people have died this past year – drug overdose, but from loneliness and feelings of isolation. Many of them had been ‘clean’ for extended periods, but in their bid to cope, had OD’ed. [names have been changed] Neil was one of our friends who died. At Orca – Simon passed, and I led his memorial a few months back. Last week I learned of Big John, and two weeks before that of Paul [Pam’s husband]. Candice, at Smithers, recorded on her phone answering message, her loss of a family member. I don’t know all the ones who have died during Covid, but while the media would chalk it up to ‘drug addict overdosing’, I know the root cause was loneliness, feeling abandoned, and the fear of no one caring.

For this reason, Manna plays an important role in our community. We offer non-judgemental support and encouragement, assistance to contact community resources and government help, and the underpinning of hope.

Last Spring, Manna was invited to consider providing lunch and snack supplies to Springwood School’s ‘support our students’ program. We were told of multiple Diabetic kids needing access to ‘energy food/drinks’ and we were able to step into this opportunity for this Fall.

Manna had initially been approached to help a family suffering the sudden death of a husband/father. We provided over $300 of gift cards that the administration doled out in a timely fashion; a large collection of non-perishable food items; and some requested clothing items. Our immediate non-judgemental assistance assured the Springwood Admin that Manna could be called upon at a moment’s notice.