Feed San Diego's Homeless for Thanksgiving Special Event - Thank You 11-23-2015

What an incredible night serving San Diego’s homeless for Thanksgiving 2015! The Streets of Hope held its annual Thanksgiving event and it was a huge success thanks to the servant hearts of so many of you volunteers.

San Diego Homeless Thanksgiving Event

Over 100+ homeless people in attendance

Close to 40 Streets of Hope Volunteers

100 + Meals Served

20+ Haircuts

100’s of Articles of Clothing Passed out

120 Pair of High-End Running Shoes Distributed

10 Multi-Minute Massage

2 People committed to God deeper

Here’s how the night went:

Hair Cutting for the Homeless on Thanksgiving

It started off with Tammy cutting hair for the homeless. Tammy is a professional stylist and usually has a few others join her in cutting hair, but tonight, she was the only volunteer. When San Diego’s homeless started lining up, at one point 10+ people deep, it seemed a bit overwhelming. But somehow she got every single homeless person in line a hair cut. She cut 22 homeless people’s hair in 2 hours. Tammy said, “It’s like god made time stand still because it felt like I was with each of them for a long time.and I had so much peace the whole time!” Amazing. Thanks Tammy for your amazing servant’s heart.

Massages for San Diego’s Homeless

For the second time in Streets of Hope homeless outreach, we had our professional masseuse David, set up his table and give free 10 minute massages to the homeless. It was incredible to see some of San Diego’s homeless in awe that someone wanted to touch them and give to them in this way. David shared how so many were open for prayer this time around

Feeding the San Diego’s Homeless on Thanksgiving

Once again Christina made food for 100+ people! Even with all that food, it felt like we were going to run out, but Christina said it was so strange because the food, drinks and desert supplies seemed to be never ending. No matter how much the team passed out there was still more to give. Tammy said it reminded her of Jesus and the five loaves of bread, as recorded in Matthew 14, that fed over 5,000 people!

Clothing San Diego’s Homeless on Thanksgiving

One of the highlights of donating clothes to San Diego’s homeless tonight was the 120 pairs of top-notch shoes donated by RoadRunnerSports.com. Passing out the shoes and sizing them up for the homeless is no easy task, but super rewarding as shoes and socks are a top requested item of the homeless. Speaking of socks, dozens of pairs were donated! There’s nothing like getting a new pair of shoes and socks when you really need them. There were so many smiles on people’s faces tonight!

Not all of those smiles came from just shoes and socks, there were hundreds of other clothing items passed out to the homeless too! From t-shirts, to jackets, and pants, the Streets of Hope team spent a good part of the night passing out clothes.

Sometimes at our special events, the donation area can get chaotic, but tonight it was so organized and it went so well. This is one of the smoothest nights it has ever been – thanks Jenn and to the donation team for making it so great

Thanking God with the Homeless on Thanksgiving

What would Thanksgiving be without a few words about giving thanks. Our own Eric C. spoke tonight from the bible about what it means to be thankful. When he finished he asked anyone who wanted to accept Christ into their heart to raise their hand, and 2 people raised their hands high!

There are so many more homeless stories we heard tonight, but none of these stories could have been possible without the volunteers. So we need to give a special thanks to some of you by name:

Thanks to Our Homeless Hair Cutting Team

Tammy, for cutting hair for over 20+ people

Thanks to Our Feed the Homeless Team

Christina for bring the main dish and side dishes!
And of course all of you that passed out the food to the homeless

Thanks to Our Homeless Massage Team

David, our homeless massage therapist, and his wife Cindy

Thanks to Our Clothing Donations Team

Jackie and Paul for bringing over 120 pairs of shoes this time. WO
Jenn for talking to each homeless person and getting their shoe size and clothing requests
To all of you who brought clothes, blankets, toiletries and more

Other Special Thanks

Anne for leading the event and closing us out; we were on time for everything!
Eric for speaking about Thanksgiving and Jesus
Nate for encouraging, organizing our event
Jo, Marta, Tammany, Parker, Lyle, Curtis, Alex, Andrea and Suzy and all of your for serving for to the homeless
Philip and Greg for helping keep the peace!
Tammy for doing all the special event coordination
Dave Miller from Thrivent for the “Live Generously” T-Shirts and financial support for the event
To Road Runner Sports who donated over 100 amazing running shoes!