News-Record.com

A moment of inspiration drew Karen Olsen into a ministry she's been urgently pursuing for more than 20 years now. The Summit, N.J., resident explained at tonight's Guilford Interfaith Hospitality Network dinner.

Olsen was divorced, raising two sons and managing a successful career in New York. Like everyone else, she stepped around the "scary" homeless people scattered along city sidewalks.

Until one day.

"My heart was aching to help someone," she said.

Suddenly she let her heart take over ... bought a sandwich ... gave it to a woman ... "ended up talking to Millie ... she had a name."

Soon, "my heart was working overtime." She began taking food to homeless people at Grand Central Station ... getting to know them ... bringing gifts at Christmas, with her sons ... "getting hugs and God-bless-you's."

"This was joy," she said.

She found there were homeless families in the Jersey suburbs, where she lived. Worse, children were being taken from their parents and put into foster care, because of homelessness.

"I turned to the religious community because I thought they would want to help if they knew, and they did," she said.

What they did became Family Promise, an organization now known in 38 states as Interfaith Hospitality Networks.

With nine chapters, North Carolina has one of the most active networks. More than 60 congregations in Greensboro, High Point, other Guilford communities, Thomasville and Archdale participate in providing shelter, meals and other services for homeless families with the goal of helping them return to permanent housing.

Olsen speaks with indignation in her voice when she describes a homeless woman whose family slept outside a locked church door after the minister denied them shelter because of fears about "liability."

The homeless "are crying out to congregations today," she said. "God is calling us."

The Guilford network welcomes families in need of support and shelter.

It still doesn't reach far enough. Somewhere in our community, a call for help goes unanswered, a family sleeps outside locked doors. Responding to their needs requires people who, like Karen Olsen, are willing to act on an impulse and work with a sense of urgency.