On Saturday mornings, Burton heads up LOT (Least of These) ministry where he and volunteers serve breakfast to the homeless folks in downtown Asheville. When he moved to the Holler, we kind of adopted this ministry and now it is our main outreach service project for Holler Days.
This past Saturday, LOT was very blessed to have an abundance of volunteers but only a handful of people in need of food showed up. On a normal morning around 150-200 homeless folks show up. But I guess the fact that it was 7 degrees had something to do with the shortage. We (Brackin, Ryan and I) decided to recruit some folks from AHOPE (a day shelter just down the street) to come have a hot breakfast because we just couldn't give enough of the food away. While at AHOPE, we met a lady who was cold and hungry and in need of a warm place to stay for the day. Her name was Mary Susie. We didn't have much to offer in terms of shelter, but we invited her to come to the LOT location in hopes that someone there would have a solution. It's a good thing that Burton has a lot of knowledge of the options available to homeless folks in Asheville. So he told her every option he knew of but none of them were possible because of her situation.
So we had to make a decision. We didn't have anywhere for Mary Susie to go, but we couldn't just leave her out in the cold. So we did the only logical and loving thing. We invited her out to the Holler so she could warm up. After LOT was over, we headed to the Holler and gave her a warm meal and a warm house. We got to spend a couple hours with her to get to know her. We served her soup that Rebekah had made for her family and treated her as part of the Holler family. Most of the community members were there and nothing really seemed out of the ordinary. We had a good lunch time just talking and enjoying the company of the community and a few guests.
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