Not a Solo Effort
The recent Reno Hope Bus block party wasn’t a solo endeavor. Community help was crucial, to make it as big as possible, which is why the local church-based Mission 58 outreach group stepped up to the plate to serve hot food.
Members of the Mission 58 group, aligned with the North Valleys Higher Vision Church, passed out prepared food, chips, cookies, snacks and water bottles.
“I think that a lot of the homeless are actually looked down upon. They're looked as they're less than anyone else. That sits really hard with us on our hearts,” Jason Lane, the Mission 58 outreach coordinator said.
Mission 58 is named after Isaiah 58, a verse which reads in part:
Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear ….
Mission 58 says it strives to help kids in the foster care system, people with substance abuse and those dealing with mental illness.
“There's so many lost people that have felt like society has left them behind and we feel like that through God's word and through God's will we want to recreate relationships with them and make them feel like they're needed and wanted,” Lane said.
The block party had food, haircuts, games and an overall joyous atmosphere.
Looking to City Officials for Assistance and Trying to Change Perceptions of Religion
Jonathan Fountain, the lead pastor of Higher Vision Church, also volunteered at the block party. He said he thought the event could use more help from city officials and other kinds of outreach services.
“I do think it would be better if maybe we could have some people from our city, our local officials, that could come and actually start partnering with us,” he said. “ We meet people who are mentally ill. I met a lady today who really wants some help and I wish I had somebody here I could literally just hand her off to and go, 'Here's this person who works for this place,' our tax dollars are already going to it and we believe in that,” Fountain said.
Fountain also hopes that the work Mission 58 is doing changes the stigma surrounding religion.
“We're not here to yell at people about what we're against. I think that's kind of the old religion part of our country. But at the end of the day, it's not a good representation of really who Jesus is. He's not that way. We're just actively trying to also help that message, to help people see that that's really not what the church is all about,” Fountain said.
When Fountain was 20 years old, he says he was houseless himself. He said he found hope and purpose after receiving Jesus as his savior and now he wants to do the same for other people.
“What people sometimes I think fail to look at when it comes to the homelessness, they look at it as, 'Well, they're just homeless.' But what people don't realize: it's a community. It is a community, legit community, within our communities. It's one that a lot of communities don't want to refer to as a community, but it is,” Fountain said.