This year's Easter Festival
We opened our doors for 24hrs over Easter - all thanks to your support!
Easter is an exciting time of year for most families: an opportunity to spend time with the kids, enjoy those Easter chocolate goodies, and for those of us in the Catholic-Christian faith, we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the most important time in our Church’s calendar.
For those roughing it on the street however, this time of year isn’t so sunny: many of them do not have families to celebrate the season with; and many of the services that our visitors rely on daily close during this time as well. It’s a hard time for many.
Holy Week here at Emmanuel City Mission was beautiful. As we had done previously, this year Emmanuel City Mission opened its doors for extended service: this means 24-hour service from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday morning. Yes, that’s right- our doors did not close.
Easter service varies quite significantly from the way we celebrate Christmas. Our Christmas tends to be a vibrant celebration boasting lots of live music and yummy Christmas dinners; but for Easter we decided to dial it back a touch with a focus on peacefulness and prayerful serenity. Our visitors enjoyed delicious home cooked dinners such as potato and leek soup with grilled cheese toasties, house made garlic bread, and authentic lasagne. The focus was truly on comfort.
Coming into the Easter Festival, our visitors were greeted with a freshly made bed: mattresses scattered in every nook and cranny donning crisp flannelette sheets and blankets. One visitor came up to us, proudly proclaiming that she had found the best and most comfy place to sleep for the night. She had placed her mattress up on the sanctuary: a far cry from a tent by the Brisbane River.
After dinner, it was time to hop in pyjamas, brush teeth and get ready for bed. It’s actually quite sweet seeing our visitors walking around in their pyjamas. On the street our visitors may come across as the most intimidating people, but at ECM they are given a safe space to let their guard down be the truest version of themselves. A place where they will not be judged for what they look like, or what they have done in their past.
It’s vulnerable; and it’s family.
Now, I did say that the Easter Festival is much more reserved compared to our Christmas Festival, but there was one exception. On Thursday night, we were lucky enough to have local band Ten12 playing at the mission. We had visitors liken them to Powderfinger and Midnight Oil. What a great way to kick off our 24hr service!
Being open for 24 hours over 4 days is quite a feat, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without a team of wonderful volunteers.
Our shifts lasted 3 – 4 hours over Holy Week, and to my surprise we had quite a number of people putting their hand up to cover the graveyard shift (aka midnight shift)! We were very fortunate to have Deacon in training, Daniel Ibbott and the team at Moorooka Salisbury Parish manning the midnight to early morning shift. They were like quiet mice scurrying in through the night, quietly watching over our visitors ensuring that they were safe and sound.
Upstairs in the volunteer breakroom, we had a handful of volunteers also sleeping over for the festival. These volunteers and staff members kindly gave up the comfort of their own beds to stay at ECM, ready to be woken up when it was their turn to serve. These people gladly offered their time, a decision made easy by the fact that Bec from Renegade Roasters had the coffee machine pumping ready to caffeinate these sleepless servants.
When Easter Sunday rolled around, we were all a bit tired yet so grateful for the last few days that had been. Our visitors were blessed with Easter eggs and bunnies from the lovely Trinity College in Beenleigh, and the famous Chocolate Hedgehog slice from volunteer, Fina. Always such a treat.
Finally, we finished up with mass lead by Fr Joe Mckay and the Emmanuel Community, followed by a big breakfast consisting of hash browns and breaky favourites to rival your local café. It was a bittersweet end to our Easter service- whilst we enjoyed being able to provide this extended service to our visitors, we knew we had to now close to give our volunteers and staff a very well-deserved break.
Now, we have some exciting news…
As of Wednesday the 27th of April, Emmanuel City Mission will be opening its doors for 24hrs every Wednesday. Yep, that’s right- every Wednesday from tomorrow night onwards, we will open the doors at 9:00am, as usual, and stay open until Thursday afternoon. This has been on our hearts for a very long time, and when asking our visitors which day they would like to see extended service for, the vote was unanimous: Wednesday it is.
Then each year onwards, we will pick up another day of 24hr service until we are 24/7 non-stop. It is dream of ours, but we know we can do it with your help.
At Emmanuel City Mission we connect homeless and vulnerable people with people who care.
Thank you for being someone who cares for the homeless of this city. We pray you had a beautiful Easter, and we can’t wait to see you in at the mission soon.