PHILADELPHIA – It’s been nearly a year since a Greenfield woman, her mom and two kids were virtually homeless just before Thanksgiving.
They look back fondly on the day a local pastor offered them shelter at The Comfort House, a parsonage-turned-duplex located on U.S. 40 in Philadelphia, just west of Greenfield.
Pastor Ethan Maple, lead pastor at Mt. Comfort Church, wanted to provide a place where those displaced from their homes could get a helping hand.
Alex, who withheld her last name, still marvels at the kindness he showed her and her family when they had nowhere else to go last November.
They were the first family to take up residence in The Comfort House shortly after it opened, as a single tenant was living on the other side of the duplex.
Alex will never forget how Pastor Maple took her family in without judgment, and how the congregants at Mt. Comfort Church embraced them.
The Comfort House was fully furnished with everything they could need – right down to a whisk and WiFi, recalled Alex – and the family counted their blessings as they enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together under one roof.
At Christmastime, the congregation rallied to provide gifts for Alex’s two young kids.
Today, Alex and her mom, her son and daughter – ages 6 and 8 – look back with gratitude at the blessings that have come their way over the past year.
They now rent a two-story, three-bedroom home in Greenfield, and Alex’s kids are thriving in school.
Alex, 34, has a rewarding job at a legal office in Broad Ripple while her mother, 61, loves her job at the Joyful Days daycare at Mt. Comfort Church.
Each Sunday, the family attends church there.
As The Comfort House nears its first anniversary, Alex and her mother want the community to know just what a difference the outreach is making for families like theirs.
“I can’t even tell you how wonderful it is,” said Angie, who says it was divine intervention that led them there in their hour of need.
Alex said she was blindsided last year when the family friend her family had been staying with told them they had to move out just days before Thanksgiving.
Alex and her kids were living in Tennessee and her mom in California when the friend offered Alex a job and a place to live in Whitestown, so they opted to relocate together.
Alex had been working for about four months when “the rug got pulled out from under me … I lost my job and home all at the same time,” she said.
She and her mom were both despondent – crying in a restaurant where they stopped to eat after packing up while the kids were in school. That’s when a friend texted Alex about The Comfort House.
Faced with either sleeping in their car or spending their last $200 on a hotel room, Alex called the number her friend shared and reached Maple, who asked her and her mom to meet him at the house that evening.
“We were bawling our eyes out, saying we don’t know what we’re going to do, and that’s when he said, ‘Why don’t you guys come on out. We have a U-Haul and a car,’ and so we met him and he took us through an initial move-in interview,” Angie recalled.
“He told us the space was ours. All we have to do is bring our clothes and food.”
Helping Hand
Maple also referred them to the Hancock County Food Pantry, where they were provided a ham and all the fixings for a Thanksgiving meal.
The pastor checked in with the family the following day and set up weekly meetings where he and another church leader would help them work toward independence, leading them toward assistance with job placement, financial planning, transportation and housing.
Over a 10-month span, Alex saved up enough money to rent a home in Greenfield near her children’s elementary school.
She doesn’t think it would have been possible without the guidance and support from Maple and his congregation at Mt. Comfort Church.
“They gave us the chance to take a breath, they gave us a chance to regroup to actually get a plan in place, and they encouraged us to stick with the plan,” she said. “There were weeks when we felt like we were failing, and they would encourage us through it,” she said.
Angie praised the church congregation for taking her family in. “They have been nothing but wonderful to us. We have met so many wonderful people,” said the grandmother.
“I don’t honestly think that we would be where we are today had divine intervention not come to us. We probably would have been separated somehow. We still sit and look at each other sometimes and say it’s unbelievable we’re in our home.”
When she and Alex first met Maple, they didn’t realize The Comfort House was his personal passion project until a board member later shared that insight.
“To learn that after the fact and see how much he loves what he’s doing with it, and how helpful it really is, to see that come to fruition for somebody, that’s beautiful in itself,” said Alex.
Angie still gets choked up thinking about last Thanksgiving, when she and her family were blessed to have a meal on the table and a roof over their heads, just days after packing up everything they owned.
“Thanksgiving has always been family time for us, and for us to have the means and the food to be able to cook and sit with each other, in this place we could call our own … it was a beautiful thing. We looked at each other and were very appreciative of the fact we were all together,” she said.
Attitude of Gratitude
Alex said it’s surreal to look back a year later and know that her family is exactly where they hoped they would be this year – in a home of their own, providing for their family with the promise of a brighter future.
Her mom said she’ll never forget the kindness Maple and his congregation showed in their hour of need.
“They did not make us feel bad, they only encouraged. They were always upbeat and never degrading. I cannot thank the people at Mt. Comfort Church enough – every single one of them – for everything they’ve done for us.”
Both women are mindful of just how quickly hard times can fall upon anyone.
Whether it’s through a life change, job loss, illness or natural disaster, “it can happen to anyone,” said Angie. “Nobody is exempt from losing everything.”
When hard times hit, “make a plan and have hope, keep faith. There are good people out there that want to help,” she said.
“It’s not about sitting back and saying, ‘Oh poor me,’” chimed in Alex. “You have to do the legwork and put yourself out there and just keep moving forward, whether it’s a month or a week or a day at a time.”
On the days when the mother felt defeated, Maple was there to lift her and her family up and remind them of how far they had come.
“He would say, ‘Do you realize what you guys have already accomplished?’ They wouldn’t look at the two steps back, they’d keep looking at that one step forward, and that would keep us positive. It was a snowball of positivity that kept rolling,” Angie said.
Maple said The Comfort House has served five families since it first opened a year ago, with most staying several months until they can find more permanent housing.
While he’s thrilled it’s been able to help people like Alex and her family, he’s disheartened that he’s had to turn some people away due to lack of space.
“It’s certainly meeting a need. It’s just unfortunate that there’s only one thing like this in our county, and there are a lot of families that could probably benefit from it,” said Maple.
“Our community partners are doing a great job helping connect us with families in need, but we also get cold calls from families who have head about us or been directed to us,” he added.
Seeing success stories like Alex’s makes all the hard work worthwhile, he said.
“It’s a success story when we can look back and see The Comfort House is living up to its mission to help families like hers,” he said.
“She and her mom were working their plan and there were days in which there were celebrations and times days when we met them and they felt defeated and depleted. Things weren’t necessarily always falling into place, but as the journey continued it was clear to see this family was moving towards something that God had in store for them. It was fun to walk with them in that journey,” he said.
For more information on The Comfort House, visit mtcomfortchurch.com/the-comfort-house.
