The Christmas Miracle of Home

This past December at CHRISTUS Our Daily Bread was unusually busy in helping clients secure housing or return home. 

With nowhere to go, a patient was dropped off from the local hospital at Our Daily Bread. “It was the end of business, and we knew we couldn’t put him out on the streets,” said Johnathen Vallery, Our Daily Bread’s client navigator. Vallery immediately called Adult Protective Services (APS) to file a report. “An APS officer returned my call and notified me that the patient’s sister had been located.” After speaking with the sister, Vallery learned that she was staying at her daughter’s house, so her brother could only stay temporarily. The next day, APS picked up the patient, having secured him a room in an area nursing home.

In another instance, a Florida grandmother received the best gift ever – the return of her grandson. “A client in his late 30’s came to Galveston from Kansas trying to start over,” said Vallery. “Somebody had told him there were jobs down here. When he arrived, it was harder to find one than he realized.” His grandmother had been begging him to come back to Florida and get off the streets. “He didn’t want to return, because he wanted to prove he could support himself. I let him know that if he had a safe place to go, we could help him get there.” He shared that Galveston had been hard and wanted help getting to Florida. “When I called his grandmother, she was so excited I thought she was going to jump through the phone. For our staff, it felt like a Christmas miracle getting him back to his family.”