BANGOR, Maine — Last Thanksgiving, Jennifer Kane and her husband, James Russell Spencer, were homeless. The Bangor couple was living under the Interstate 395 bridge in a encampment known locally as tent city.
They credited Jericho Road Street Ministry, supported by half a dozen area churches, with helping them get a roof over their heads. The organization has offered food, clothing and fellowship to Bangor’s homeless for the past five years, most recently at 5:30 p.m. every Monday at the corner of Railroad and Summer streets near the Bangor Waterfront.
“The folks in tent city introduced us to the ministry and what they do,” Kane, 31, said Monday when Jericho Road volunteers served Thanksgiving dinner and distributed warm clothing, tents and sleeping bags. “We’re currently sober. We now have a roof over our heads. My husband is working full time, and we’re doing everything we can to help the ministry assist other people who are fighting their addictions and battling with struggles in their relationships with God.”
Spencer, 30, said their lives really turned around about two months ago.
“I had a terrible time fighting alcoholism, and it put me in a coma in the hospital for nine days,” he said Monday. “The ministry put us up in a motel [when I was released]. That’s how we first got a place to stay. It changed our lives completely for the better.”
Grateful for the help they’ve received, the couple returns on Monday nights to help minister to people they know, many of whom still are living in tent city and on the streets of Bangor.
“I can’t tell you the blessings that have come from us accepting the help that we needed,” Kane said. “Being able to come down here and be with people who have known us and still see us sober two months later [is one of them]. I see it coming out in them and them trying, and that just increases our faith every day.”
Jericho Road Street Ministry was started in summer 2011 by Lighthouse Church of God in Orrington. The first couple of years people walked the city wearing backpacks, passing out gloves, water and sandwiches, Larry Keezer of Bangor, who has been volunteering for about four years, said Monday.
“It just has grown since then,” he said. “The Lord has provided it for us. We survive on donations from churches. There’s just a tremendous need in Bangor.”
Five other churches — Glad Tidings and the River Church, both in Bangor, New Life Church in Brewer, Orrington Center Church and Franklin Street United Methodist Church in Bucksport — now are part of the ministry, according to Mel Coombs of Orrington, who volunteers every Monday night. He said about 25 volunteers help the ministry serve between 50 and 80 people per week.
“We first served Thanksgiving dinner last year,” Coombs said Monday. “It was such a big success, we did it again this year. People come together, and they sit at the tables, and they talk. It may be with someone they had a quarrel with this morning. But they’re sitting down here at the table tonight making amends.
“We brought the church to them,” he said. “This is where we meet them. We meet them in the street.”
In addition to food, the ministry offers clothing, sleeping bags and tents to the homeless.
“We started giving out clothing from the back of my truck,” Coombs said. “With donations from the churches we got a 7-by-16 foot trailer. This year, we got the one we use now, which is an 8½-by-32 foot trailer.”
On Monday night, it was packed full of winter coats, boots, socks, hooded sweatshirts and underwear all sorted by sizes. Sleeping bags and tents lined wooden shelves.
Volunteers also passed out bagged lunches so people would have something to eat the next day.
“Every week, it seems we run out of stuff, but by this time next week, we’ll be replenished,” Coombs said. “God just continues to provide so that we can provide, but, we can always use more.”
Spencer said that his faith “has increased exponentially” because of his involvement with the ministry.
“What we’ve been through and from where we came and where we are now … We’re slowly, surely getting out of tent city,” he said.
Kane said the couple intends to spend Thursday volunteering at CityReach Church, located at the former YMCA on Hammond Street, helping to serve the Thanksgiving dinner.
“Wherever God takes us, that’s where we’ll be,” Spencer said of how he plans to spend the holiday weekend.