New Bethel, others offer hope, family on Thanksgiving

YOUNGSTOWN

Wherever the need may be, New Bethel Baptist Church’s Recovery Ministry is willing to go.

On Thursday, that meant opening the church hall for free Thanksgiving dinners and delivering meals to scores of homes and two Youngstown-area motels. In all, the Hillman Street church provided 300 to 400 meals Thursday.

“The holidays are a time when people are with family, but for whatever reason some people don’t have family,” Minister FloEtta Jordan said.

The May Motel on Mahoning Avenue in North Jackson and the Boardman Inn on Market Street both contacted the South Side church when they learned it would be delivering free Thanksgiving meals on Thursday.

“They both said the same thing: They have a lot of dislocated people,” said Jordan, who has organized a free meal each of the last three years.

Gigi Oatman is a different type of disclocated person — a woman who formerly lived in the Andover area and worked in Girard but who found herself unable to get to work because of car problems.

She learned about the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley and found out that it had a place where she could stay and more easily get to work.

She also discovered that by living at the Rescue Mission, she could get out from under $1,500 in payday loans she had accumulated.

Ten months after she moved into the Rescue Mission, she paid off her debts and also learned that her military service from the 1970s would enable her to attend college.

In July, she entered the Rescue Mission’s yearlong Second Chance program, which has brought people such as Jordan into her life. Jordan leads a Bible study at the Rescue Mission.

Read more of Oatman's story and others in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.