The response by bringing your plastic bags has been great. It will take 2 cars to get them to General Assembly!
If you’re homeless or for some other reason forced to sleep outdoors, “bedtime” can mean the wet cement or damp earth. Sleep swirls in, less as an opportunity for peaceful rest and optimistic dreams than the real dangers of the dark, including assault and robbery. The plarn (plastic yarn) mats can do little to shield a person from those threats, but they can help assure that the fragments of sleep remaining are more restful.
One person has slept on two of the plarn mats, and they do make a difference in the outdoors, he said. “You put them on the ground and they help you stay drier,” he said. “Your blankets don’t get so dirty. They have a cushioning impact.”
The advantages the plarn mats provide to a homeless person are critical. For example, the mats thicken the barrier separating the ground from a blanket or a sleeping bag with a person tucked inside it.
The number of homeless in our nation is growing. It is our hope that these sleeping mats might make life a little easier for some in Ohio.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Carolyn