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2009 Service Trip to Scranton
Helping the homeless at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Scranton
In Lent of 2004, a group of volunteers at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Scranton decided to host a dinner for the homeless. Five years later, that small start has grown into a monthly meal for 80 to 100 people and an array of services for the homeless and working poor in the community including haircuts, health screenings, shoes and clothing, and toiletries and personal hygiene products.
In December 2008, the church was awarded a social outreach grant through the Diocese of Bethlehem's New Hope campaign that will provide $200,000 over a five-year period to improve the kitchen, add bathroom facilities, improve facilities for clothing distribution, create an emergency shelter in the undercroft of the church for bitterly cold winter nights and emergencies where families are displaced from their homes, and make room for a food bank in the shelter area.
Members of St. Philip's and Trinity Buckingham spent the week of Sunday, July 26, through Saturday, Aug. 1, working in Scranton to assist with this project. People were unable to travel to Scranton helped by donating toiletries that will be distributed at these dinners.
These volunteers scraped and painted walls in the kitchen and undercroft of the church, tore out an unused stage and built a wall in the area that will be used to distribute used clothing, sorted through donated clothing, and performed a variety of other chores at the church. They also helped serve dinner at the St Francis Soup Kitchen in Scranton.
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SEE PHOTOS of the volunteers from St. Philip's and Trinity
Watch our slideshow
Pam and Warren Shotto
of Good Shepherd
talk about Seasons of Love
The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry;
the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked;
the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes
of the one who is barefoot;
the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor;
the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.
—Saint Basil the Great
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