The Mercy Table event days hosted at Mercy Road Church Northeast not only serve the people who drive thru or carry out, we also deliver and have a few drop off locations. We’ve learned Fortville, Indiana and Anderson, Indiana communities have several motels that rent to low income individuals who may not qualify for a house or an apartment for a variety of reasons. Some of these motels have daily rents and others rent solely on a weekly or monthly basis. These are the places the volunteers of both Seventh Day Adventist Anderson, The Mercy Table, and others have delivered to. The Colonial Motel, The Anderson INN, and The Marjon are just a few of those drop off locations.
We encourage our volunteers to engage with everyone, offer prayer, and ask if they have a need The Mercy Table or a partnering organization may be able to meet. In a previous post we shared “Needs” page for you to gain a better understanding of the needs in our communities. This page will change as the needs arise. At our last event our volunteers dropped off 75 hot meals, sack lunches, juices, and bottled waters to The Colonial Motel and 30 to the Anderson INN. The food was well received and it opened doors to building trust.
The meal drop offs have allowed us to begin building partnerships with the motel owners. Because of their kindness they’re often in need also. A few of the motel owners receive the meals on their tenants behalf and call them to the main office for the people that want a meal feeding themselves last with what’s leftover or not at all having placed their tenants needs above their own. The tenants who are not in need of a meal or decide not to take one care enough to direct us towards the tenants who have a greater need and ask we give their portion to doubly bless the individuals who have the greater need.
The questions we’re often asked are, “Are the people at the motels on drugs?” “Did they just get out of jail?” “What did the do to get themselves there?” A small few ask for follow up stories on the welfare of the individuals we’ve began to create friendships with. The answer to the first two questions is yes some, but most of us have relatives in the same or similar situation also. When this is your circumstance it’s not generally a singular decision that got you there rather it’s multiple poor choices over a period of time. Now imagine if we would really share the love of Jesus Christ and meet people where they’re at in spite of where poor choices brought them to and instead walk alongside them in their journey prayerfully guiding them to better choices. No not all will be open to this but Jesus left the 99 for the 1.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
Matthew 18:12-14
what do you think? if a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went to stray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father Who is in heaven that one of His little ones should perish.
The Mercy Table 