LGBTQ Homeless Youth Leadership Conference in Washington, DC

The LGBTQ Homeless Leadership Conference will gather 30 LGBTQ homeless youth, along with 10 support staff from the shelters and programs they represent from cities across the country.  Youth will gather from: Charolette, NC; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; Chicago, IL; Washington, D.C., New York, NY; Houston, TX; and Minneapolis, MN.

October 8-10th - Creating a National Agenda for LGBTQ Homeless Youth
While in DC, the youth will create a national agenda for LGBTQ homeless youth and teach the agenda to organizational leaders and lobbyists.

October 11th - Taking the Agenda to Capital Hill
A rally, congregational visits and national call-in will generate support for the agenda created by the LGBTQ Homeless youth.

October 12-14 - Leadership Training and Promoting the Agenda at Home
The LGBTQ homeless youth will work with mentors and receive leadership training to enable them to advocate for LGBTQ homeless youth in their hometowns. 

Scholarships
Transportation support will be provided for 30 LGBTQ homeless youth and 10 staff from shelters and organizations that serve LGBTQ homeless individuals.  If you or youth that you are connected to are interested in attending the LGBTQ Homeless Youth Leadership Conference, please contact the Rev. Megan Rohrer (megan@welcomeministry.org).

Accommodations:
Our accommodations are designed to bring awareness to the youth who are sleeping in shelters, often in churches that have opened up space to them.  During our conference the LGBTQ homeless youth and the adults supporting them will be staying in a hostel at Luther Place.  Dedicated to serving the homeless with emergency, transitional and long term housing opportunities through innovative whole body care, we are proud to partner with Luther Place and the Steinbruck Center for Urban Studies.



Leadership Team
The Rev. Megan Rohrer - Welcome, San Francisco
The Rev. Jen Rude - Night Ministry, Chicago
Andrew Garside - LA Gay & Lesbian Center
Bianca Vazquez - Steinbruck Center for Urban Studies at Luther Place


Mentors
Kate Bornstein
Candice Gingrich
Zander Keig

Support the Conference
If you would like to support the project or provide scholarships for LGBTQ homeless youth to participate in the conference, you can donate to Welcome (all donations are tax deductible).  Please put "LGBTQ Youth" in the memo line.  Donations are accepted online or by mail: Welcome, 1751 Sacramento St., San Francisco, CA 94109.

Contact Information
For more information about the project or to get involved in anyway, please contact the Rev. Megan Rohrer (megan@welcomeministry.org).

Your support today will keep me living indoors.

I'm sure you've seen them, all the letters that folk like me send to folk like you because we know that this is the time of the year when most of our fund raising dollars will come in. And in an economy like this one, there are loads of Executive Directors out there, like me, who are wondering if the money will come at all.

The answer is only known by you, trusty donor.

But, one thing is certain, now more than ever thinking about who you're giving your hard earned money, donations and time is vital to the life of the programs that support those who are most vulnerable. And this is the part of the letter where beg you to make Welcome the organization you give your money to.

Insert a heart warming story for those who give from the heart. Insert a fancy invitation and creative end of the year fundraiser, for those who need an event.

The links above will connect you to the tried and true fund raising strategies that you'll find in all those letters coming to your doorstep this month. Enjoy them if that's what works for you.

But I thought this year I'd try something new: the truth. The truth is that Welcome is an amazing organization that helps people one-on-one improve their quality of life through our core programing that teaches volunteers hospitality as we feed more than 680 individuals a month.

We also provide education for congregations and faithful individuals throughout the country. More than 89,000 read our blogs, I led 74 church services and spoke at 13 universities, national conferences, shelters and congregations around the country.

All our work is completed by 1 staff person and our more than 875 volunteers a year. But, we are so good an organizing communities, that nearly all the stuff we give away (more than 3,600 outfits, toiletries and socks a year and more than $3,000 of food a month) we get for free from donations.

This means when other organizations tell you that they spend very little on salaries and most of their funds go towards stuff for people, we do the exact opposite. We get all the stuff donated from congregations, organizations and individuals around the country and feed more than 8,000 people a year for about $7,000 a month. Most of this cost is my salary.

So today, I am literally begging you to help pay my rent. Living in San Francisco, my salary at Welcome only $7,000 a year more than my rent costs. You can see why a downturn in the economy makes me very very nervous. We are not an organization that can cut fluff from our budget during a tough fund raising year.

I am a pastor who works with the homeless, but I am reminded with each paycheck how close to homelessness I am myself.

Why would you want to help pay my rent? Well, if you've followed my blogs you've probably noticed how hard I work and how much I get done. But beyond that, you know that helping me stay housed, in turn helps thousands and thousands of others.

When I had the idea to make a farm that could provide free food to people in our neighborhood people thought I was crazy and it couldn't be done. When I fought to create the Homeless Identification Project, people thought we could never get funding for it.

These ideas have all come out of my deep listening to the homeless that I am blessed to get to work with. But, the real truth is that each year Welcome needs to come up with new innovative ways to serve the homeless or we are unable to get major grant support from foundations.

Together, with hundreds of other donors, your gift of $20, $150, $2000 can make a real difference to me.

Your gift today will take my mind off paying my own rent, so I can go back to supporting the homeless and hungry who need my time and support more than they ever had. $43 pays for an hour I spend with someone to help them avoid relapse; $129 can provide trauma care for a veteran and help them navigate life in supportive housing; and $258 allows me enough time with a homeless youth to help them find a job, reconnect with family and find alternatives to suicide.

If you don't have cash to spare during this difficult time, you can always help by recommending our program to your friends; asking folk to support us rather than giving you Christmas gifts; donating items to Community Thrift on behalf of our organization or by encouraging your congregations to support us with their benevolence funds.

Please consider donating now online or by mail:
Welcome, 1751 Sacramento St., San Francisco, 94109

Thank you for all the ways you support Welcome throughout the year!

Rev. Megan Rohrer
Executive Director

P.S. Your support now, helps us feed and care for thousands of homeless individuals in San Francisco.

In the News: Bay Area Reporter

'Encampment' brings attention to homeless LGBT youth

NEWS

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Published 05/19/2011

by Matt Baume

	Homeless youth and their allies staged a "street sweep" in the Castro last Saturday to bring attention to budget cuts for social service programs. Photo: Matt Baume

The May 14 encampment was part of a nationwide demonstration to raise awareness of homelessness among a demographic known as transition-age youth. Homeless and foster youth between 16 and 24 years old can face unique housing challenges, particularly as they age out of the foster care system and learn to navigate services for adults.

"We're here to engage the community on homelessness, and specifically queer homeless youth issues," said organizer Beck, who uses only one name. "We're in kind of a state of emergency, saying, 'hey community, wake up.'"

Saturday's action started at Civic Center with games, an unveiling of protest banners, and hot meals served by Food Not Bombs. A march proceeded to Harvey Milk Plaza, where speakers read poetry and called for improved access to services to get off the street.

Their requests included housing with kitchens, rather than single room occupancy hotels with no facilities for food preparation; employment opportunities for youth who are unable to complete school; and an end to the sit-lie ordinance.

According to local organizers Trans Youth Rise Above, there are 5,700 homeless youth in San Francisco, of which at least 1,000 are queer.

Operation Shine America, which coordinated similar rallies in other cities, estimates that there are 2 million homeless youth in the country. Queers for Economic Equality Now also organized the San Francisco event.

Beck explained that organizations like the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and Larkin Street Youth Services' Castro Youth Housing Initiative have faced repeated budget cuts, reducing services that can prevent youth from living on the street.

Jodi Schwartz, executive director of LYRIC, agreed that times are tight. "There has been a sizable decrease in investments in LGBTQ youth services," she told the Bay Area Reporter. "Just for LYRIC, if we were to lose the last piece of dollars for transition-age youth workforce, our decrease in funding would be 72 percent over the last four years."

Larkin Street Executive Director Sherilyn Adams told the B.A.R. that the extent of cuts won't be known until Mayor Ed Lee releases a budget later this month.

"There's no proposed cuts to the Castro Youth program," she said, but added, "it does not begin to meet the need."

To address the potential consequences of such cuts, Lee recently convened a stakeholder group consisting of representatives from organizations that advocate for homeless youth. Based on feedback from that group, the mayor asked that the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families prioritize funding for LGBT and undocumented youth.

While organizations hope to turn around the recent budget cuts, local organizers are seeking ways to demonstrate how the city's rate of youth homelessness could worsen.

After Saturday's protest concluded, about three dozen homeless youth spent parts of the night camped out around the Muni station, according to organizer the Reverend Megan Rohrer, director of the Welcome Ministry, a coalition of 12 churches that seek to provide a faithful response to poverty.

Rohrer is currently working with the GLBT Historical Society to raise visibility by drawing inspiration from past struggles. She incorporated a "street sweep" into Saturday's protest, in which participants swept Castro Street sidewalks with brooms to evoke a similar 1960s-era protest.

In that action, LGBTs protested the city's negligent sanitation and police roundups by pushing brooms through the Tenderloin.

Chosing Not to Sleep on the Streets

I made a decision last night to not sleep on the street as planned. At first I was ashamed of my decision. The Rev. Megan Rohrer told those who gathered there that sleeping on the streets that night would not make you a better person but if you went home, just remember you could not do it even one night, when all these youth don't have that choice (paraphrasing there to get the gist!) She was right, it would not have made me a better person, but knowing myself well enough, it would have made more smug. I would have been more critical of colleagues who didn't even show up at all. She was right, I could not, of my own free will, choose to sleep out after all.

But I do know a little something of what it is like to no longer have the choice. I did spend one week of my life homeless, but unlike these youth, it was thru my own stubbornness, my own stupidity. Every day I saw where people had found my clothes and possessions that I tried to hide, since I couldn't carry them all, having been ransacked and little by little I lost them all but for the one small bag I carried with me. I did not have to sleep on hard streets, like most of the youth and other homeless folks do here in the city, I had park, I would crawl into the underbrush and cover myself with leaves so no one would see me. However, I did only have to do this for a week. And I did move on from there. But that experience stuck with me and is why I work with SF Night Ministry and it was why I joined the rally and march last night.

But I still chose not to sleep on the street.

One of the things I have learned in ministry is that it is tough to find out you have limits. There are just certain lines you come to and cannot cross at that moment. Sometimes all you can do is bear silent witness to others suffering, pain, anger etc. and even there, you still reach your limit. I heard things last night that I did not agree with, things I did not want to hear, things I needed to hear. And sometimes I could not hear a thing as I began to wrestle with what it all really meant, what was I supposed to do, how was I supposed to witness?

I chose to stay as long as the speeches, then I chose to go home. My limit, that line last night was that I could not sleep on the street.

Will I go to another rally like this? You bet I will! And another, and another and another, for as long as I am able. And who knows, maybe next time, or the next time or the time after that, I may cross that line and choose to sleep on the street! or Maybe that will never happen. We will see.

-Bishop Rusty Clyma

In the News: Bay Area Reporter

Shining a light on homeless LGBTQ youth

Guest Opinion

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Published 05/12/2011

by Beck, Adele Carpenter, and Tommi Avicolli Mecca

It is estimated that nearly 2,300 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth in San Francisco are homeless.

In 2007, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition on Homelessness concluded in their joint study, "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness," that 40 percent of homeless youth in this country identify as LGBT. One would have expected a tremendous outcry in the queer community when that study was released. Especially here in San Francisco.

Where was that outcry?

You'd think that a community such as ours, which is capable of raising millions to promote gay marriage and to fight "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," would have poured a lot of effort and money into housing young people by now. But, where are those resources?

Programs that support transitional age homeless youth are usually left out of local and national fundraising strategies that allocate millions of dollars for lobbying efforts in the name of our families and the safety of our community. What about the homeless queer youth who reside on the streets and who are looking for family and safety, but instead often encounter exploitation, violence, and criminalization under laws which make it illegal to sit or lie in public?

They need services, but where are the queer youth services in San Francisco?

An activist group spearheaded three emergency winter shelters, a food program, and a shower project for homeless youth and others in the Castro in the late 1990s after the dot-com boom caused a sharp spike in rents throughout the city, making it impossible to afford an apartment. Those services opened despite unbelievable opposition from merchants, landlords, and residents. When the last of the shelters folded, the Youth Empowerment Team secured $750,000 in city funds for 29 beds for LGBT homeless youth under Larkin Street's Castro Youth program. That program is now down to 22 beds and looking at more cuts this year. Not to mention the devastating cuts to the LGBT Community Center's Transitional Youth program, which packs in over 300 youth a year for food and resources.

Meanwhile, the LGBTQ youth space at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center was shut down in 2010. Advocates have been negotiating with the Recreation and Park Department for nearly a year to have it re-opened, but it is clear that consistent staffing, hours, and overall youth access to the space, will continue to be compromised. The Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center has been forced to reduce its open-door programming for transitional age youth due to lack of city support, and its internship program, which was cut last year, is facing a possible total elimination in the budget of the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

The closure of New Leaf: Services for Our Community's youth substance abuse treatment program was a hard hit for those attempting to access LGBTQ friendly substance abuse counseling and mental health treatment. While the clinicians at Dimensions Clinic do an excellent job, services meant to engage youth in treatment have not been fully restored.

Clearly, the community needs to speak out.

This Saturday, May 14, queer youth and allies are taking part in a national effort to shine a light on homelessness among queer youth. Hosted by Operation Shine America and the AJ Fund, youth organizers will provide makeovers, video and photo booths, art workshops, freeze tag, and a free dinner donated by Food not Bombs. This begins at 6 p.m. at the Civic Center. At 7:30 p.m., youth art from the AJ Fund will be used to decorate a march that will make its way toward Harvey Milk Plaza. Marchers will remember AJ Trasvina, a local youth who spent his last years providing support to homeless queer youth.

At Harvey Milk Plaza, we will illuminate our lanterns and shine a light for a homeless youth open mic. Participants are encouraged to wear purple and bring candles. The event will culminate with a sleep-in at the plaza that is a separate event organized by Welcome Ministry. Later, some plan to perform a peaceful street sweep with handmade brooms and signs, symbolizing the poor being displaced by lack of access to space and support.

Through stories and information, we will illuminate the local and national issues of homelessness among queer youth, much of which is caused by rejection by family and community, the high cost of rent, criminalization, and a lack of employment opportunities and training.

It's time for all LGBT organizations and our community to make homeless queer youth a priority by allocating resources to these vital services. Not from year to year, but for many years to come.

Beck, Adele Carpenter, and Tommi Avicolli Mecca are all members of the newly formed coalition, QUEEN, or Queers for Economic Equality Now.

Homeless React to the Sit/Lie Law

Skills Shared and Skill Shares

Have skills? Want to share them?
Want to learn skills by doing?

At our Tuesday Welcome meals, we have begun sharing professional self-care/body care/hygiene when skilled volunteers are available.

We have begun with a monthly volunteer who has professional haircutting and styling skills, averaging six haircuts each month! It is hard to find free haircuts these days, and at best they are often a rough buzz cut. That is why is to so amazing that a Welcome has committed to providing professional haircuts monthly for Welcome guests.

Maybe you have a skill around self-care or body care that you could share Tuesdays 2-4pm. We are particularly looking for massage, holistic health practitioners, poverty/trauma-informed nursing, relaxation exercises...if you've got a self-care or health professional skill, we would love to talk to you about volunteering two hours monthly with our guests.

Thinking that you are not skilled in such ways? We can use your ordinary and extraordinary gifts in our regular programming, whether in cooking, cleaning, chatting with guests, visiting people who are isolated, or sorting clothing and toiletry donations.

And there is another opportunity if you are skilled in life, health, or nutrition skills- come share with a Health Skill Share class. Staff support includes facilitating discussion, help incorporating various learning styles, ground rules, and providing space and snack set up. Leading a Skill Share involves preparing 30 minutes of presenting or a 50 minute discussion on a particular health skill with time for questions and discussion.

Topics we would like to find skilled community members to cover in the future:
-Foot care
-All sorts of nutrition topics from poverty-informed perspectives
-Legal rights/questions around homelessness, poverty, and SRO housing
-Heart and lungs
-Vision care
-Community politics
-Transportation, pedestrian issues
-Many mental health self-care topics
-Safer sexuality

Interested? Contact Pete Feltman for general volunteering and Tuesday meals or Pastor Jay Wilson for Skill Shares.

Video from trip to Philadelphia

Celebrate our identity crisis!

In 2008 the Welcome Ministry started a new program called the Homeless Identification Project. We discovered that lack of identification was a barrier that prevented our chronically homeless and hungry guests from accessing the crucial support they needed from government, health and social service organizations.

With a substantial support from Wheat Ridge Ministries, the Welcome Ministry set out to help 150 people obtain their identification. In 2008 we got 340 and already we helped with 149 in 2009. We have not only exceeded our goal, but we also helped a substantial majority of our homeless friends to move indoors.

So today I am proud to announce that the Welcome Ministry has an identity crisis. It no longer makes sense to call ourselves a homeless ministry. Our board will be meeting soon to talk about what our new identity will be.

We continue to offer support to our community, to listen for the small things we can do to a miraculous difference in the lives of those living in poverty and to teach people the skills they need to live independently as a full member of the community. And as we begin our new community gardening and cooking program, we are starting to reach beyond our community in to spark an Urban Sharing movement that we hope inspires communities across the country to share their resources in this vital time.

Today I invite you will join me in celebrating the Welcome Ministry’s identity crises. The Welcome Ministry no longer primarily serve the homeless. Thanks be to God!

Rev. Megan Rohrer

Director

P.S. The Welcome Ministry is unlike other organizations that celebrate low administrative costs. We believe that all the resources we need are out there and find that people will share them when we they know what we need. We strive to get all our supplies and food donated. Your financial support enables us to spend less time fundraising and more time helping people help themselves. Donate Online

How to respond to panhandling?

When someone asks you for a dollar on the sidewalk, do you ever wonder what would be the most effective way to help?

Born out of a series of meetings between faith groups, businesses and local residents of the Polk Gulch District, the Welcome Ministry listens deeply to the needs of those living in poverty, the community and city government. Our programs not only fill in the gaps between what the city and other organizations provide, but focus on the crucial barriers that prevent people from improving their quality of life.

For example, when the Welcome Ministry learned that lack of identification was preventing hundreds of homeless individuals from gaining access to city and organizational resources, we developed the Homeless Identification Project. As a result organizations with ten times the budget of the Welcome Ministry began referring their clients to us. While helping 224 people obtain their birth certificate and 121 obtain state issued identification may not seem like much, the program enabled more than 155 individuals obtain housing in 2008.

This year, the Welcome Ministry is creating two crucial new programs. As we began to help our formerly homeless guests move indoors, we learned that their new homes do not have proper cooking facilities. Instead of giving out food like a typical food pantry, with an assumption that individuals have a way to cook groceries, the Urban Food Share Program will provide pre-cooked take home meals, opportunities for communal cooking and gardening and health and
nutrition classes.

But the needs of those living in poverty go beyond food and shelter, many of our guests have trauma from military service, domestic or childhood abuse, violence or as a result of years living on the streets. Stress and anxiety from trauma can be debilitating. Classes and direct one-on-one care will enable many of the most vulnerable in our community to cope with or heal from the trauma that prevents them from improving their quality of life.

If you are like the Welcome Ministry, and you want to invest in small changes that can make a big difference in addressing the root causes of homelessness, please join our unique community of San Franciscans responding to homelessness, one person, one sidewalk, one city at a time.

Support the Welcome Ministry

Work Featured by HRC

Profile in Ministry: Expanding the Definition of an LGBT Advocate

Photograph by Gabriela Hasbun.

Rev. Megan Rohrer was recently featured in the exhibit, Polk Street: Lives in Transition, that explores San Francisco’s Polk Gulch neighborhood from the 1960s to the present. Examining the historic changes that have occurred in this famous community, the exhibit asks tough questions about the ways gentrification challenges lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender hospitality. It asks us to think about what it means to welcome LGBT people? Does economic disparity narrow our sense of welcome? When we advocate for the LGBT community can our vision incorporate a spectrum that includes sex workers, homeless seniors and runaway youth? What are the intersections with our work for LGBT justice and the work of building and sustaining healthy communities where all can prosper?

One of the participants in this project, Rev. Megan Rohrer, challenges us to think about our communities in just such ways. Megan first came out as a lesbian (later she would identify as gender queer) at 18 in South Dakota and discovered at the same time that she wanted to be a pastor. While leaving the overt homophobia of South Dakota for seminary at the Pacific School of Religion and the progressive community of Berkeley, Calif., she still felt a sense of alienation—this time because of class--among the affluent neighborhoods in the Berkeley hills. She eventually found her way to what would become her true calling, ministering to the homeless through the Welcome Ministry program at Old First Presbyterian Church in San Francisco.

The people Megan ministers to range in age from teenagers to senior citizens and are largely sex workers, transgender people, gays and lesbians –many of them from small towns across the country--who came to San Francisco to escape persecution and judgment. Although they may not identify on paper as LGBT, Megan recognizes many commonalities. Like her, many came from across the country to San Francisco--the Mecca for LGBT folks--only to discover that hundreds of thousands of other people had made that same choice. As Megan describes:

They didn’t have any family connections to help them out, and everybody knows rent is so expensive in this town that, the only thing that was left for them was sex work. As the gay community--as the richer gay community--moved towards the Castro, the less wealthy gay community stayed here, and a lot of the sex workers who worked along Polk Street continued to stay here because they always would have people who would bring them food, here. . . . and they knew, as long as they stayed in this neighborhood, even if they weren’t pretty enough anymore to be sex workers, people would take care of them.

In the spirit of Jesus who also spent much of his time among sex workers, Megan’s ministry has sought to build community among the most marginalized and in the process to expand our vision of what community and LGBT advocacy can mean. As we work to build support in Congress for hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act during an economic crisis when job discrimination and violence is escalating, we are reminded that it is the most marginalized in our communities that suffer first and are hit the worst. Megan’s ministry models for us what it means to build truly inclusive community that can sustain all of us.

To follow Megan’s ministry, read her blog: http://mystreetretreat.blogspot.com/. Also, check out her contribution as a writer for HRC’s Out In Season, a seasonal preaching and devotional resources written from a transgender perspective.

To learn about the other stories from Polk Street, check out the exhibit Polk Street: Lives in Transition. If you live in the Bay area or are traveling to San Francisco any time before May 31, 2009 you can view the exhibit at the GLBT Historical Society, 657 Mission Street, #300. Visit their website to learn about more community events and future developments of this important project.

See: http://www.hrc.org/issues/religion/12189.htm

Mail for Justice

Did you know that supporting the Welcome Ministry means promoting just mail.

The Welcome Ministry believes that it is unjust to require individuals to have a “residential mailing address” in order to obtain access to vital and life saving services.

Many of the individuals we work with are unable to use the address of the place where they live because they facilities refuse to accept mail, others stay in shelters, live on the streets or have other unstable situations that prevent obtaining an address that the location where they dwell. Still others have accessibility needs and need help reading their mail, determining what mail is important or other assistance.

The Welcome Ministry provides a safe place for people to obtain their mail, in a way that keeps them safe and helps improve the quality of life of the individuals who receive their mail here.

Remembering David

Last week I presided over a memorial service for David. I must confess, coming up with a sermon was more difficult than normal because I didn’t really know David. I knew that he was playful and funny and that each week he came to share lunch he would pretend he couldn’t remember our names. I knew David’s name very well, since he received mail at the church. After he passed, I learned that David knew my name well too. In fact, the medical examiner informed me that on his contact information at the hospital he had listed my name on the line that said “home.”

While only four of us gathered to remember David’s life, we were joyful that David was not one of the hundreds of homeless individuals who die in San Francisco each year without anyone to remember them.

I often say that my most important job at the Welcome Ministry is to learn people’s names. After all, my journey to become a pastor began when God remembered my name and it was marked on my forehead with water.

The Welcome Ministry not only learns people’s names, we help them gain an identity. In the short term we help people get their state issued identification and birth certificates, but in the longer term we help them to improve their quality of life, to advocate for their needs and to gain the quality of life that all humans deserve.

Today, I invite you to support the vital work of the Welcome Ministry. I also hope that with your gift you will share the name of someone who has been important to your life, faith or identity. Whether you are able to give a lot or a little, remember that the little I was able to share with David was big enough to create a sense of home.

Blessings,

Rev. Megan Rohrer

Memorial Day

"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of The Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: "Come, let us go up to the mountain of The Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us His ways and that we may walk in His paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of The Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:2-4 RSV)

Today I am remembering all the veterans that have and are serving our country. We know that at least 23% of all of the homeless are veterans.

We also know that 18 vets commit suicide each day.

I am the child and granddaughter of veterans who recovered from the ravages of war in alcoholism. I wonder how many generations are affected by the traumas of war?

This year I'm getting special training to help people who have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Veterans of nearly every war, have suffered from PTSD. Trauma is something that nearly everyone has experienced. The homeless, like veterans experience multiple traumas.

This Memorial Day I remember that another cost of war is the way that lives are forever changed. As a pastor, I hope to help all people recover from the daily battles that distract people from God(dess). As a pastor to the homeless I daily walk with people hoping that each step we take together will improve their quality of life.

-Rev. Megan Rohrer

Megan has been the Director of The Welcome Ministry (a ministry to the homeless and hungry in the Polk Gultch District of San Francisco, CA) at Old First Presbyterian Church since June of 2001 - and has been called to this ministry by a joint call from Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Christ Church Lutheran, St. Francis Lutheran and Sts. Mary and Martha Lutheran.