PACEM: November 26 to December 3
Our church hosts homeless men, guests of PACEM, for one week at the end of November. PACEM is a group of congregations in Charlottesville who take turns hosting both homeless men and women guests in their church home overnight, feeding them dinner, and providing shelter. Last year we hosted an average of forty men per night during our week.
PACEM conducts an intake process for all guests at the HAVEN and the men are delivered by a bus to our doors at about 6:30 PM. Cots, sheets and blankets are provided by PACEM which we set up throughout Summit House on the beginning Saturday. We provide dinner each night with our partners, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and we also provide two overnight volunteers to sleep in the house as help to the hired PACEM staff. We offer not only the warmth of our food, but also the warmth of our company during dinner and in the evening.
Sign-up sheets for offerings of house set up and clean up, food, serving dinner, and evening and overnight hosts will be in the Social Hall each Sunday from mid October through November. Last year over one hundred of our members and their children participated in this church hosting. We continued to enjoy our friendships with our neighbors, the members of Ebenezer, and learned to conceive of our community in the larger arc of everyone who lives among us. May you receive the gift of participation.
Questions? Elizabeth Breeden.