• By RJ Walters, Editor •
The new Blue Water Free Store in the Port Huron District may only have ‘X’ dollars to pay rent in its first months, but it’s already changing ‘X’ number of lives.
Opened the first weekend in May, the Rev. Robert Chapman of Washington Ave. and Gratiot Park UMCs said the store that is operated by members of nine local United Methodist Churches served more than 175 families in its first two weeks by providing clothing and basic necessities.
“I got a call the first week we opened from a lady who said, ‘I need a washer, do you have a washer?’ I told her we didn’t at that time but that she should come in often,” Chapman said. “That afternoon I went into the free store to work and a couple came in and said, ‘We have a washer.’”
He said that story is par for the course early on in the life of the store as volunteers have served a homeless veteran, disparaged and displaced people from broken families and young people just looking for a leg up during tough times.
“We’re so busy with our everyday lives it’s hard to open our eyes to see the need that’s out there, but there is a need,” Chapman said. “The people that come in — it’s kind of funny in some way because they are often more generous than those that have things. We have people who come in needing things and will actually come in and offer things for trade.”
The unselfishness is a recurring theme in the early development of the store that is located at 4819 Lapeer Road just outside of Port Huron.
Much of the store’s inspiration came from Port Huron District Superintendent the Rev. Joanne Bartelt, who attended the district’s Bishop’s Day event which hosted the Rev. John Edgar of the United Methodist Free Store in Columbus, Ohio.
Chapman said a woman approached Bartelt following Edgar’s presentation, informing her that a resale shop in Dryden was going out of business and all of the goods, racks and shelving could be purchased for a drastically reduced price.
A donation covered the costs, so Chapman and some of his colleague’s moved on to finding a storefront.
“We were looking for a place that we could rent and one of my parishioners from Washington Avenue Church happened to be driving down Lapeer Road outside Port Huron and they saw a small strip mall and outside it said, ‘Free Rent,’” he said. “So he called me and I said, ‘Well, I know it’s not free, but we’ll check it out.”
It turned out the storeowner and his wife were interested in helping the community out.
Chapman said they could only offer the man “roughly 20 percent” of what the location could probably rent for, but a few days before all of the goods had to be carted away from the closed resale shop, he got a phone call: “You’ve got the building.”
After renting a 26-foot trailer to haul everything to Kimball and spending most of a week getting the storefront ready, the store opened on May 7.
Now it’s just about getting a regular rotation of volunteers set for the store’s Friday and Saturday business hours and pulling in more donations to fortify the store’s financial footing.
“I liken it to Moses when he led the Israelites through the wilderness. They got manna only one day at a time,” Chapman said. “We have enough money for this months rent, donations have come in, some churches have taken collections, but we don’t know where next month’s rent is coming from.”
More information:
Blue Water Free Store
4819 Lapeer Rd., Kimball
Hours: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday and Saturday
To get involved or donate items, call the Rev. Robert Chapman at (810) 982-2049 or send a check to the Port Huron District office made out to the “Blue Water United Methodist Free Store.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment