Changing the Subject
I didnt want to leave you without an update, but since training is on hold, work is so so and politics make me want to wretch, I decided to post the news article about one of my oldest friends.
she's pretty cool.
The gift of giving
Naperville woman throws party for homeless on her birthday
September 30, 2008
By M.B. Sutherland Special to The Sun
When Naperville's Sherilyn Sheets celebrated her 27th birthday Sunday, instead of asking family and friends for gifts or a celebration for herself, she asked them to help her throw a party for homeless people in Chicago.
Sherilyn says the idea to do something for the homeless came to her last year around her 26th birthday when she told a friend she wanted to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and invite friends along to hand them out to homeless people.
Naperville native Sherilyn Sheets celebrated her 27th birthday in downtown Chicago, but she did it by helping her friends. She opened her birthday party to many of the locals of the Loop who may be homeless to join her in her celebration Sunday. (Terence Guider-Shaw/Special to The Sun)
Before her birthday party Sherilyn Sheets had collected food and clothes to give out as party favors Sunday in downtown Chicago. (Terence Guider-Shaw/Special to The Sun)
"I chickened out," Sherilyn said. "I started thinking about how uncomfortable that would be for some of the people I would invite."
In August, Sherilyn said, "My birthday was coming and I got stressed out because I didn't want a celebration. I didn't want people to feel like they had to make me feel special."
So, she decided she could turn it around and make it productive. She wanted to turn her birthday into something that would impact other people's lives.
Ministerial rootsSherilyn came to the Chicago area after college when she decided to attend graduate school at Wheaton College. To pay her expenses, Sherilyn found work as a live-in nanny for a Naperville family and continued living in Naperville while she earned her master's degree in inter-cultural studies last May.
The daughter of a Wesleyan Church pastor, Sherilyn grew up in several different places split between Rochester, N.Y. and Mayo, S.C. Sherilyn describes herself as coming from a "huge line of pastors" who served in various missionary capacities.
Her great-grandmother was born to missionaries serving in China in the early 1900s. Sherilyn's grandparents are music evangelists, and Sherilyn herself has been a youth pastor and a missionary. Although no longer a member of the Wesleyan Church, she is currently a member of the Community Christian Church in Naperville.
"It's the big yellow box at Rickert and Ogden," Sherilyn said.
An unlikely helperSherilyn says she prayed a lot and thought of the idea of a birthday party for the homeless. She sat down with her pastor and his wife and began to describe her idea of collecting coats for the homeless and giving them out at the party. Before she had finished outlining her plan, her pastor asked her if he could give her a coat.
Sherilyn also received encouragement from one of the very people she wanted to help - a homeless man named Tyrone. As she struggled with whether she should go ahead with her plan, Sherilyn went to Chicago's Union Station where she says she was "walking around terrified. I don't usually walk around talking to homeless people. I was worried about finding someone not sleeping, finding someone mentally stable."
She saw Tyrone lying on a bench. As she began talking to him, Sherilyn told Tyrone about her idea for the party and asked for his advice. Tyrone told her he felt other homeless people would be receptive to it.
"To me, that was affirmation," Sherilyn said. "It's not mine, it's the Lord's."
'Hurting heart'Sherilyn' brother, Stevan Sheets - a pastor at Our Savior's Wesleyan Church in Mukwonago, Wis. - says his sister "has a very unique heart. She is very people-focused and has a special spot in her heart for homeless people right now because she's in the Chicago area. I got in trouble from her for calling the paper. She doesn't have any (desire) to receive attention. She wants to bless people who aren't blessed."
Sheets, who lives near Milwaukee, described taking the train to Chicago to see "Blue Man Group" with his sister five months ago.
"We were walking through Union Station and she saw a couple of (homeless) guys sitting on a bench and the next thing I know she was sitting on the bench talking with them. ... She has an eye for the homeless and a hurting heart for them."
Sheets says the party "totally makes sense for who my sister is. I'm an older brother, so I have feelings for safety issues. But I know that we both serve a God that's bigger than any concerns that I should have."
Helping othersSherilyn says she had two basic ideas in mind for the party. One was to restore identity to people.
"These people are out there every day and they're not going home to someone who is looking them in the face and acknowledging that they're worth something. I wanted to communicate to these people that they are loved by God and that they're valuable," Sherilyn said. "That's what this is about - that one gesture of being an equal in the image of God. Not speaking down to (the homeless) or apologizing to them, but to simply love." Sherilyn's second purpose was to make a festive party and to give warm clothing to those who need it.
"I don't know the hunger factor and people have different opinions. But it is going to get cold," Sherilyn says. "I can have compassion on the fact that coldness stinks. We (wanted to) try to help prepare (homeless people) for a Chicago winter."
Party invitationsTo put her plan in motion, Sherilyn mobilized young adults in her church and began recruiting people to help her throw the party. She enlisted people to help sort winter clothes and to play the guitar for party entertainment. She also asked family members to send her money to fund the event. Sherilyn then spent her Sundays going to Chicago where she sat down with homeless men and women she met on the street and gave them invitations to the party.
On one such Sunday, she met a homeless man named Mike who sat on a foot-wide median clutching a sign that said he was hungry. Sherilyn says she handed him the invitation and told him she wanted to help him. As they talked, Sherilyn told Mike that he was valuable, and he cringed, she said.
"It broke my heart," Sherilyn said. "This man, his self-respect has taken a beating."
Sherilyn also re-encountered her source of affirmation - Tyrone - and gave him an invitation.
"I told him he was the reason we were there and that this was happening. I told him I wouldn't have gone forward if not for him," she said.
Initial fearsSherilyn also put out collection boxes for coats and donations at her church. Her boss at the Naperville Starbucks where she is a barista also suggested that she put another collection box for coats in the coffee shop and allowed her to put a donation box on the counter. Although Sherilyn says she didn't collect many coats at the Starbucks, she did get some monetary donations from customers and co-workers.
Late Sunday afternoon, Sherilyn and about 30 volunteers arrived near Union Station. Sherilyn said she had "a weight of worry that we were going to be stopped (by authorities)." As they pulled up to park, she was surprised to find Tyrone standing there waiting for them, prepared to help them unload and get ready for the party.
"I told Tyrone I was scared and worried that the police would stop (the party)," Sherilyn said.
Tyrone suggested they move the party across the street in front of an office building that was closed for the weekend. Sherilyn saw this would be a better location because, although Sunday evening is a slow time for the train station, there was no one at all coming out of the office building.
The Lord knew my biggest fear," Sherilyn said, "but he also knew how he would supply it. From then on, I decided I refused to be afraid of anything else." And, although security guards at the building did voice some objections in the beginning, Sherilyn assured them that the party would not be long and they were allowed to stay.
Wearing name tagsSherilyn and her group handed out 42 "goody bags" containing items such as warm gloves, socks, knit caps, hand warmers, bananas, apple juice, candy, tissues and other prepackaged snacks.
"We were frantically making more (goody bags) with whatever we had and there were still some people who didn't get them," Sherilyn said.
She estimates there were about 50 homeless people who came and got warm clothing. They also had coffee, some brought by volunteers and some donated by a Starbucks near Union Station.
Volunteers at the party wore name tags and gave name tags to the homeless people in attendance. Sherilyn said she wondered if the homeless people would refuse to wear the tags but found everyone receptive to them.
"I really wanted to stress identity and to validate who they were as individuals," Sherilyn said. "It was just so neat to be able to address them by their names and to let them know that that was important.
"I was fascinated to see how many people who came to volunteer really gave from their hearts," she said. "They weren't just checking it off their list or doing their good deed for the day. I was amazed at how much ministry and love was being shared."
Short on suppliesSherilyn herself had an inspiring encounter with a young homeless man named Timothy.
"You could tell he was on drugs or unstable," she said. He told her his story and admitted that he had a drug problem.
He told her, "Sher, I'm ready to stop. I need to get clean," she said.
He asked Sherilyn if she knew of any organization that could help him. Sherilyn had not prepared herself to give out that kind of information, but she immediately thought of Tyrone. She asked Tyrone, who gave Timothy advice and directions to a nearby clinic.
"Who knows if they would have had that sort of conversation before," she said.
There were other tense moments during Sunday's party. Sherilyn had to ask a homeless man named Shaun to give her a box cutter that he was showing to everyone while jokingly threatening to cut them if he didn't get the coat he wanted. She said she was a little nervous, but surprised when he handed it over without argument.
And on the way to set up the party, Sherilyn and her friends saw Mike, the homeless man she had met weeks before, and reminded him not to miss it. But Mike fell asleep and only arrived at the end when all the coats had been given away.
"My heart just broke," said Sherilyn. "I almost started crying when I was helping him look through the stuff because there was no coat left that he could use."
Sherilyn gave him two pairs of gloves and told him that she would come back to give him a coat if she could find one.
"I was just overwhelmed with how beautiful it was," Sherilyn said, adding that she had to take some time to break down and cry about an hour into the event. "There were no snags except we ran out of stuff. Nothing was too big. There was no opposition that wasn't met with a solution. I don't have enough expressiveness to say how great it went."
Guardian angelAlthough Sherilyn refuses to give herself any credit for what went on, she is glad to hand it to others.
"Tyrone was my guardian angel," she said. "He was so looking out for us."
After the event was over, Sherilyn said that Tyrone told her that in some people's lives, he's a nobody, but that he was proud of the part he played in the day.
"He felt that, and he was taking ownership of what he did," she said.
Sherilyn does not plan to repeat this particular event, but plans to move on to other things.
"I didn't do this, the Lord did," she says. "I don't have permission to do it again. I was just being obedient to God."
However, she says, "Something was planted in my heart for that group of people. People who need love and human contact."
She has spent time recently in a nursing home visiting the step-grandfather of the family that she worked for in Naperville and plans to focus on that area for a time.
"It's not about changing anything," she says. "I wish it was about lasting change, but I don't have those resources. Sometimes (people) just need to be pushed or encouraged. I don't mind doing that."
she's pretty cool.
The gift of giving
Naperville woman throws party for homeless on her birthday
September 30, 2008
By M.B. Sutherland Special to The Sun
When Naperville's Sherilyn Sheets celebrated her 27th birthday Sunday, instead of asking family and friends for gifts or a celebration for herself, she asked them to help her throw a party for homeless people in Chicago.
Sherilyn says the idea to do something for the homeless came to her last year around her 26th birthday when she told a friend she wanted to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and invite friends along to hand them out to homeless people.
Naperville native Sherilyn Sheets celebrated her 27th birthday in downtown Chicago, but she did it by helping her friends. She opened her birthday party to many of the locals of the Loop who may be homeless to join her in her celebration Sunday. (Terence Guider-Shaw/Special to The Sun)
Before her birthday party Sherilyn Sheets had collected food and clothes to give out as party favors Sunday in downtown Chicago. (Terence Guider-Shaw/Special to The Sun)
"I chickened out," Sherilyn said. "I started thinking about how uncomfortable that would be for some of the people I would invite."
In August, Sherilyn said, "My birthday was coming and I got stressed out because I didn't want a celebration. I didn't want people to feel like they had to make me feel special."
So, she decided she could turn it around and make it productive. She wanted to turn her birthday into something that would impact other people's lives.
Ministerial rootsSherilyn came to the Chicago area after college when she decided to attend graduate school at Wheaton College. To pay her expenses, Sherilyn found work as a live-in nanny for a Naperville family and continued living in Naperville while she earned her master's degree in inter-cultural studies last May.
The daughter of a Wesleyan Church pastor, Sherilyn grew up in several different places split between Rochester, N.Y. and Mayo, S.C. Sherilyn describes herself as coming from a "huge line of pastors" who served in various missionary capacities.
Her great-grandmother was born to missionaries serving in China in the early 1900s. Sherilyn's grandparents are music evangelists, and Sherilyn herself has been a youth pastor and a missionary. Although no longer a member of the Wesleyan Church, she is currently a member of the Community Christian Church in Naperville.
"It's the big yellow box at Rickert and Ogden," Sherilyn said.
An unlikely helperSherilyn says she prayed a lot and thought of the idea of a birthday party for the homeless. She sat down with her pastor and his wife and began to describe her idea of collecting coats for the homeless and giving them out at the party. Before she had finished outlining her plan, her pastor asked her if he could give her a coat.
Sherilyn also received encouragement from one of the very people she wanted to help - a homeless man named Tyrone. As she struggled with whether she should go ahead with her plan, Sherilyn went to Chicago's Union Station where she says she was "walking around terrified. I don't usually walk around talking to homeless people. I was worried about finding someone not sleeping, finding someone mentally stable."
She saw Tyrone lying on a bench. As she began talking to him, Sherilyn told Tyrone about her idea for the party and asked for his advice. Tyrone told her he felt other homeless people would be receptive to it.
"To me, that was affirmation," Sherilyn said. "It's not mine, it's the Lord's."
'Hurting heart'Sherilyn' brother, Stevan Sheets - a pastor at Our Savior's Wesleyan Church in Mukwonago, Wis. - says his sister "has a very unique heart. She is very people-focused and has a special spot in her heart for homeless people right now because she's in the Chicago area. I got in trouble from her for calling the paper. She doesn't have any (desire) to receive attention. She wants to bless people who aren't blessed."
Sheets, who lives near Milwaukee, described taking the train to Chicago to see "Blue Man Group" with his sister five months ago.
"We were walking through Union Station and she saw a couple of (homeless) guys sitting on a bench and the next thing I know she was sitting on the bench talking with them. ... She has an eye for the homeless and a hurting heart for them."
Sheets says the party "totally makes sense for who my sister is. I'm an older brother, so I have feelings for safety issues. But I know that we both serve a God that's bigger than any concerns that I should have."
Helping othersSherilyn says she had two basic ideas in mind for the party. One was to restore identity to people.
"These people are out there every day and they're not going home to someone who is looking them in the face and acknowledging that they're worth something. I wanted to communicate to these people that they are loved by God and that they're valuable," Sherilyn said. "That's what this is about - that one gesture of being an equal in the image of God. Not speaking down to (the homeless) or apologizing to them, but to simply love." Sherilyn's second purpose was to make a festive party and to give warm clothing to those who need it.
"I don't know the hunger factor and people have different opinions. But it is going to get cold," Sherilyn says. "I can have compassion on the fact that coldness stinks. We (wanted to) try to help prepare (homeless people) for a Chicago winter."
Party invitationsTo put her plan in motion, Sherilyn mobilized young adults in her church and began recruiting people to help her throw the party. She enlisted people to help sort winter clothes and to play the guitar for party entertainment. She also asked family members to send her money to fund the event. Sherilyn then spent her Sundays going to Chicago where she sat down with homeless men and women she met on the street and gave them invitations to the party.
On one such Sunday, she met a homeless man named Mike who sat on a foot-wide median clutching a sign that said he was hungry. Sherilyn says she handed him the invitation and told him she wanted to help him. As they talked, Sherilyn told Mike that he was valuable, and he cringed, she said.
"It broke my heart," Sherilyn said. "This man, his self-respect has taken a beating."
Sherilyn also re-encountered her source of affirmation - Tyrone - and gave him an invitation.
"I told him he was the reason we were there and that this was happening. I told him I wouldn't have gone forward if not for him," she said.
Initial fearsSherilyn also put out collection boxes for coats and donations at her church. Her boss at the Naperville Starbucks where she is a barista also suggested that she put another collection box for coats in the coffee shop and allowed her to put a donation box on the counter. Although Sherilyn says she didn't collect many coats at the Starbucks, she did get some monetary donations from customers and co-workers.
Late Sunday afternoon, Sherilyn and about 30 volunteers arrived near Union Station. Sherilyn said she had "a weight of worry that we were going to be stopped (by authorities)." As they pulled up to park, she was surprised to find Tyrone standing there waiting for them, prepared to help them unload and get ready for the party.
"I told Tyrone I was scared and worried that the police would stop (the party)," Sherilyn said.
Tyrone suggested they move the party across the street in front of an office building that was closed for the weekend. Sherilyn saw this would be a better location because, although Sunday evening is a slow time for the train station, there was no one at all coming out of the office building.
The Lord knew my biggest fear," Sherilyn said, "but he also knew how he would supply it. From then on, I decided I refused to be afraid of anything else." And, although security guards at the building did voice some objections in the beginning, Sherilyn assured them that the party would not be long and they were allowed to stay.
Wearing name tagsSherilyn and her group handed out 42 "goody bags" containing items such as warm gloves, socks, knit caps, hand warmers, bananas, apple juice, candy, tissues and other prepackaged snacks.
"We were frantically making more (goody bags) with whatever we had and there were still some people who didn't get them," Sherilyn said.
She estimates there were about 50 homeless people who came and got warm clothing. They also had coffee, some brought by volunteers and some donated by a Starbucks near Union Station.
Volunteers at the party wore name tags and gave name tags to the homeless people in attendance. Sherilyn said she wondered if the homeless people would refuse to wear the tags but found everyone receptive to them.
"I really wanted to stress identity and to validate who they were as individuals," Sherilyn said. "It was just so neat to be able to address them by their names and to let them know that that was important.
"I was fascinated to see how many people who came to volunteer really gave from their hearts," she said. "They weren't just checking it off their list or doing their good deed for the day. I was amazed at how much ministry and love was being shared."
Short on suppliesSherilyn herself had an inspiring encounter with a young homeless man named Timothy.
"You could tell he was on drugs or unstable," she said. He told her his story and admitted that he had a drug problem.
He told her, "Sher, I'm ready to stop. I need to get clean," she said.
He asked Sherilyn if she knew of any organization that could help him. Sherilyn had not prepared herself to give out that kind of information, but she immediately thought of Tyrone. She asked Tyrone, who gave Timothy advice and directions to a nearby clinic.
"Who knows if they would have had that sort of conversation before," she said.
There were other tense moments during Sunday's party. Sherilyn had to ask a homeless man named Shaun to give her a box cutter that he was showing to everyone while jokingly threatening to cut them if he didn't get the coat he wanted. She said she was a little nervous, but surprised when he handed it over without argument.
And on the way to set up the party, Sherilyn and her friends saw Mike, the homeless man she had met weeks before, and reminded him not to miss it. But Mike fell asleep and only arrived at the end when all the coats had been given away.
"My heart just broke," said Sherilyn. "I almost started crying when I was helping him look through the stuff because there was no coat left that he could use."
Sherilyn gave him two pairs of gloves and told him that she would come back to give him a coat if she could find one.
"I was just overwhelmed with how beautiful it was," Sherilyn said, adding that she had to take some time to break down and cry about an hour into the event. "There were no snags except we ran out of stuff. Nothing was too big. There was no opposition that wasn't met with a solution. I don't have enough expressiveness to say how great it went."
Guardian angelAlthough Sherilyn refuses to give herself any credit for what went on, she is glad to hand it to others.
"Tyrone was my guardian angel," she said. "He was so looking out for us."
After the event was over, Sherilyn said that Tyrone told her that in some people's lives, he's a nobody, but that he was proud of the part he played in the day.
"He felt that, and he was taking ownership of what he did," she said.
Sherilyn does not plan to repeat this particular event, but plans to move on to other things.
"I didn't do this, the Lord did," she says. "I don't have permission to do it again. I was just being obedient to God."
However, she says, "Something was planted in my heart for that group of people. People who need love and human contact."
She has spent time recently in a nursing home visiting the step-grandfather of the family that she worked for in Naperville and plans to focus on that area for a time.
"It's not about changing anything," she says. "I wish it was about lasting change, but I don't have those resources. Sometimes (people) just need to be pushed or encouraged. I don't mind doing that."
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