Helping Masons

We have a young entered apprentice who came into a little trouble today.  He is 21 and alone and lost the place where he was living.  No one really knows him well, but a couple of us got together and brought him to the Temple, warmed up and then took him out to lunch to hear his story.

It was an interesting story and he seems like a decent fellow, trying to break out of the tough urban life.  The one thing I noticed that Masonically, there isn't much help for someone who is not a Master Mason.  We had a couple of prominent Masons assisting us and came up short on Masonic ideas and possibilities.

We have a brother who recently retired from a prominent civic position at the suburb where the Temple is located.  We went over to the shelter and hit our first wall.  They don't take emergency cases and it can take several days to be accepted.  They did give us the card for the case worker to get him started.

Believe it or not....Salvation army was full and the YMCA requires a 3 day application process and background check.  If you are a young single man.....you are pretty much out of luck!  The only shelter that would take an emergency homeless male was on the south side of the city....almost 140 blocks away!  Which would not work because he needed to be up in our town to get his stuff from his building the next day.  We literally called places for three hours and hit the wall with each one!  it was very frustrating.

I understand that women and children and seniors are very important as well are families, but should it really be that difficult to get a young single man help?  I can see why they roam the streets and get into trouble.

Thanks to the Evanston York Rite members, we were able to pool together enough cash to get him a warm space and some bus fare and a few extra to eat with.

I hope that he takes our advise and gets with the case worker to get into the shelter, it actually looked quite nice.   We will keep up with his progress and see how he takes it.