Ministry aims to expand local shelter for women, children By JAMES DRAPER news1@kilgorenewsherald About seven years ago, a member of Living Word Church was driving down the road and saw a house for sale. Purchasing the building and moving it to the rear of the church’s 17-acre property, the building was a gift, but one with a single caveat: use it as a women’s shelter. “After it was remodeled he opened it up to the first person who came along that needed a place to live,” explains Sandy Heiermann, Haven House administrator. “First we started off with just two women living there. We started putting more and more and more.” An empty classroom became an efficiency apartment, another place for women to sleep. Even a recreational vehicle added still more living space. Today, at-capacity on FM1252, Haven House can house up to 25 women and children at any given time: “We’ve found that we can put people in a lot of places.” The goal is to provide help, hope and a safe haven for those in need of transitional housing, homeless women and their children. “We have a couple of exclusions because we’re not qualified to serve them – that would be people with severe mental illness and people who are actively involved with addictions,” explained Heiermann. “If they have gone through rehab and they are fairly clean, we will take them. It depends on how well they have reached sobriety.” Haven House provides emergency shelter as well, but its volunteer staff members focus on offering potentially long-term housing for individuals ready to land on their feet. “We interview every lady that comes to us and we determine if they are someone that we can help,” Heiermanm said. “We don’t want to take someone and just create more drama in their life. If we can help them, we’ll take them. If we can’t help them, we won’t send them away – we’ll find a place. We know where to send ‘em.” Beyond a roof, first of all the shelter provides a church family, she added. Other services include life skills training, Christian counseling and an Overcomers group for habits and addictions. “That is a 12-step, faithbased recovery program” counselor and assistant director Margaret Gill explained. “That is if they’ve already reached a level of recovery. They’re just needing extra support.” Additionally, “We try to help them with their job search and employability, help them to find a job and keep a job,” Heiermann said, “help them to find transportation to their job and appointments.” Sandra Harris, as resident manager, is on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, assisting where’s she’s able. “Whatever their need is when they come here, we’re trying to promote them back into life with the normal things most of us already have,” she explained. If that means taking them to the social security office for an ID card, so be it. “There’s so many different things we do.” If the women don’t have Medicaid, the staff members pay for their medicines and doctors’ bills. “We provide mentoring. We provide case management. Many of them have legal issues, and we work with them through that,” Heiermann added. “We’re pretty much their family, and we provide them whatever they have a need of. If their children need something – if they need clothes, if they need diapers – you name it, we’ll provide it. “We don’t provide childcare for them, but they tend to work it out between themselves.” Staffing remains one of the key challenges in running the shelter, Heiermann noted, “The fact that there’s not enough of us.” Haven House’s annual, “shoestring” budget is about $25,000, assisted by donations of money, food, clothes and other supplies. “We spend a lot of our own money to keep it going,” Heiermann added. “We cut corners everywhere we can. We take care of a lot of things through social services where we can and do without a lot of times.” Transportation is another challenge: the group has numerous mobility needs in caring for their charges, like driving the women and children to doctors’ appointments in Kilgore and Longview. As far as finances go, “God provides and He always has,” Harris said. “I don’t think that’s the biggest thing because God provides for us. Transportation, He even provides that. We always get them there, somehow.” That said, “We’re just constantly being pulled in different directions. The cost of gasoline and the tight budget,” Heiermann said. “If we did have a larger budget, we wouldn’t have to worry about how we’re going to buy the next tank of gas or how we’re going to buy those prescriptions. That’s kind of the crisis we have going around here, is getting the money to meet those needs. “I don’t think the women are really the challenge. We’ve learned to go with the punches on that one. That’s really not a big issue.” The group has served about 50 women since 2006. The trio is ready, and eager, to expand as soon as possible. “We’re at-capacity right now. We’re believing God for a larger building in town that the community can support,” Heiermann said. They’ve filed the necessary documentation to become an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit. “Right now we’re under the umbrella of this church. We want to move out into the community, become a communityoperated program and receive community support. “We’ll first get our footing and then we will establish a fundraising program. Then we will expand the services that we provide to the community.” An initial plan is to establish a recovery program for substance abusers who have already detoxed, Gill said. Likewise, Harris hopes to open a resale shop to augment fundraiser efforts. “Sooner or later we want to buy a nursery for the ladies, a daycare provider,” Harris added. Expansion will also, ideally, enable the ministry to add security they cannot operate at their current location, opening their doors to a broader group of women in need. First though, Haven House needs a building. Currently, “Everything is owned by the church. When we walk away from here, we have nothing except the donations we’re able to receive,” Heiermann explained. “We’ve been looking, and we think that we need to raise a considerable amount of money or we need a generous donor to turn over the keys to a building.” Granted, she added, there may not be anyone ready to just handover a building, but she’s hopeful one, at a good price, will become available. “We believe that God is going to do some miraculous for us.” The three women serve Haven House on a strictlyvolunteer basis. In addition to Harris’ on-site supervision and programming, Heiermann logs about 40 hours per week as pastor/director, and Gill devotes about 20 hours to the ministry each week. “We volunteer our time and we love it, or we wouldn’t do that of course,” Heiermann said. “We have other people who come in and do things for us, like maybe counseling or giving transportation, Bible lessons, things like that.” Heiermann brings 20 years of social services experience to the volunteer post; it isn’t her first rodeo running a women’s shelter. “I think all of us have a passion for helping people. I know I’ve always wanted to help homeless people, from many years ago I can remember seeing homeless people and my heart just goes out to them,” she said. “What I get out of it is a deep-seated satisfaction. My heart just feels good when I see someone succeed and I know they weren’t doing so well a few months ago or a couple of years ago.” “When they leave here, they’re doing good.” The average woman’s stay at the shelter is generally less than a year, but some women who are progressing, steadily gaining the ability to become independent, have stayed up to two years. “Some get into college programs, so we allow them to stay here while they are accomplishing their goals in college,” Harris explaining. Coming from a background of struggle, Harris – like her two colleagues – has been a single mom in the past. “We bring experience. I’ve always seen them, other ladies out there. I understand their hearts and where they are,” she insisted. “It’s a safety net we’re trying to give them. When you’re out there and you have no place to turn, we give them that place to turn to. We give them encouragement, and we give them love. “You got to have the heart for it or you couldn’t be committed to it. You’ve got to have the heart for what we’re doing. No matter what we’ve sacrificed or giving to these ladies, whatever, it’s watching them grow and have a life, and get on their feet and have a home.” Counseling, mentoring and teaching the women, Gill said she can understand their situations. “My desire is to see young ladies or whomever, for their lives to be changed by the power of God,” Gill said. “I believe in that because my life was changed by the lord God and my faith in Christ Jesus.”
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 17:29:03 +0000
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