Austin ministry delivers ‘Bags of Grace’ to homeless

By Claudia M. Williams
Staff Writer
It’s not unusual for drivers who see beggars on street corners to avoid eye contact and check to see that the car doors are locked and windows closed.
But that’s not true for some United Methodists in Austin. They roll down their car windows and beckon the beggars to come to them.
The church members don’t give a cash handout. Instead, they hand over a plastic bag containing food, water and a Christ-based message of encouragement.
The handouts are called Bags of Grace.
Bags of Grace is a ministry begun by Rita Auerbach, a member of Bethany UMC, Austin. The one-gallon zip-close bags often contain small toiletry items as well as nonperishable food.
Also in the bag is a “Forgiven” card. It shows a picture of Jesus lifting up a man who is carrying a hammer and nails to nail Jesus to the cross.
On the reverse of the card, which is the size of a business card, is a message about God’s grace and forgiveness and a prayer, in both Spanish and English, that the recipient can say to accept Jesus as savior.
“For most people,” Auerbach said, “it’s easier to sit in a car and judge the beggars on the street corners as worthless bums than it is to feel compassion for them.”
Auerbach knows. Because of a childhood experience, she explained, “the very sight of a street person filled me with contempt.”
One day in October 2003, her attitude changed. She pulled up to a busy intersection in Austin.
“There stood a street person holding a cardboard sign,” she said. “Years ago I would have rather run over him than help him. That’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s true.”
Earlier, at a time when she was overcome with the understanding that her ministry was to serve the homeless, she had prayed, ‘Father God, don’t make me love them!’”
On the October day in 2003, Auerbach said, God’s answer to her prayer was very clear: love them.
She handed the man the only $2 she had. And though she wanted to say something to him, she couldn’t.
“I couldn’t even say ‘God bless you,’” she said. “ I just couldn’t speak.”
Auerbach continued on her way to a wholesale shopping club where, she said, “God took me shopping. Everything in the Bag of Grace the Lord God told me to put in there.”
Since that day, she—and many others—have carried bags in their cars, prepared to hand them out.
Just how many homeless people have been helped by Bags of Grace is hard for Auerbach to estimate.
“We do a minimum of 1,600 at the Church Under the Bridge (an Austin ministry to the homeless) a year,” she said. “We probably sell another 900—that’s a conservative estimate—at Bethany in a year.”
People can buy pre-assembled Bags of Grace to hand out.
It’s difficult to know how many drivers are handing out the bags since the word and deed have been spreading, Auerbach said.
Debra Coe, a member of Bethany, has been involved in Bags of Grace since the beginning. She is part of the ministry at Austin’s Church Under the Bridge—which meets under an Interstate 35 overpass in downtown Austin.
When she’s handing out the bags under the bridge, Coe said, she talks briefly with the people who get them. She asks them if they have anything special that they would like her to pray for. 
“This helps me to understand that these are individual, precious children who are homeless for as many reasons as there are people and keeps me from categorizing them or minimizing their situation,” Coe said.
Now her teenage children carry the bags in their cars to hand them out to street people.
And it’s not just the lives of the homeless that are being changed. An experience Sharon Hidrogo had in May shows that handing someone a Bag of Grace can make an impact on other people driving by.
“A middle-aged man was just sitting on the curb, wiping his forehead, totally in despair,” said Hidrogo, who attends Bethany, “I smiled at him, and he smiled back but continued to put his head down with his sign that said ‘will work for food.’”
At the stop light, Hidrogo pulled up behind another car.
“The person in front of us was laughing loud and being rude to the man—with their windows down,” she said. “We could hear.”
Hidrogo got out of her car and took the prepared bag to the man begging for help.
“After I handed it to him, the people in the car stopped making noise,” Hidrogo said. “They said to him, ‘You really are having a hard time.’”
They apologized to him for their rudeness and gave him a $10 bill, Hidrogo said.
Gayle Rolland’s first experience handing out a Bag of Grace not only helped a homeless person but gave her “the opportunity to witness to a stranger and plant a seed on behalf of Bethany.”
After giving a young woman a bag and a bottle of water at a traffic signal, Rolland, a Bethany member, proceeded on her way. Three turns and a stop signal later, she pulled into the parking lot at her destination. There she discovered a car had been following her from the corner where she had given the woman the bag.
“I saw a stranger getting out of her car and running towards me,” she said. “My first thought was that I’d unknowingly cut her off in traffic or something and that the situation was about to become confrontational.”
Instead, the woman wanted to know if Rolland was the person who had given the homeless woman the bag and the water.
“She said she thought it was the kindest thing she had ever seen anyone do,” Rolland said.
Rolland told her about the Bags of Grace program at Bethany and showed her all the bags she had in her trunk.
“She was truly overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness, care, love and foresight that had gone into each bag,” Rolland said. Rolland explained that she was merely a delivery person and invited her to Bethany to try out the worship services and to get her own Bags of Grace.
Anyone who hands out a Bag of Grace is asked to follow a simple instruction: Make sure the illustration of Jesus Christ is visible to the surrounding drivers.
“We try to make it very clear to everyone who receives a Bag of Grace that the real giver is God and that it is his great love that enables us to pass along that love to others,” Coe said.
Anyone who wants to hand out Bags of Grace can purchase pre-assembled bags at Bethany the third Sunday of the month. They’re sold for $3, which is the cost of the items inside.
People donate money to support the ministry through the church. The money is used to buy the contents.
The church frequently sponsors “assembly parties” in the fellowship hall, and other groups, both youths and adults, assemble the bags, too. This summer a Vacation Bible School group of third graders assembled Bags of Grace as a mission project.
The first Bags of Grace assembly party—in October 2003—produced 400 bags.
Among the nonperishables in the bags are Vienna sausages, cans of fruit, packages of cheese or peanut butter crackers, sanitizing wipes and chewing gum.
The complete list of contents can be found at www.bagsofgrace.org.
“After years of giving cash to people standing on street corners, I was delighted to have the option of offering them something much more substantial,” Rolland said.
Auerbach said, “A lot of people don’t feel right about giving them money. This is something they can do instead. They can carry these in their cars. And when they see a person standing there with a sign, they can roll their windows down and say, ‘Hey, brother, would food and water help?’”