By Brad Thompson
Each year, Christ Lutheran Church in Zionsville organizes a Day of Service, during which congregation members are sent to work with area charities and serve the community. The day begins with a blessing before members travel to about a half-dozen charities.
One such charity is the Society of St. Vincent De Paul, an international non-denominational organization that serves the poor. The society operates Beggars for the Poor, which provides a hot meal each Saturday morning, a food bank, a distribution center where donated goods are given to the poor based on need and a new retail store selling gently used items. The new store is named Mission 27 Resale in honor of St. Vincent de Paul’s feast day, Sept. 27. Profits from the store will support the Changing Lives Forever program, which teaches people how to lift themselves out of poverty. Christ Lutheran Church members went to all of those locations in September to serve.
When the Christ Lutheran Church members volunteered at Mission 27 Resale, the task was to get the store ready for opening. That meant sorting through donated goods to organize them for display. The store opened in the same building that houses the distribution center, on the near east side of Indianapolis in a 110-year-old former factory. The goal of the sorting process was to select good-quality items to stock the store and organize them for display. Items that did not meet those standards were diverted for recycling.
