{"id":19760,"date":"2018-02-27T14:51:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T14:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/?p=19760"},"modified":"2018-02-27T14:51:15","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T14:51:15","slug":"homeless-thank-church-for-beds-during-cold-snap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/homeless-thank-church-for-beds-during-cold-snap\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeless thank church for beds during cold snap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Homeless people have paid tribute to a church for providing beds, food and clothing during the current cold weather.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Compassion Church on Nolton Street in Bridgend has opened its doors to homeless people as temperatures drop below freezing.<\/p>\n<p>Sandi Jacka, 38, is one of those sleeping at the church after becoming homeless eight weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All day long we&#8217;re just wandering the streets trying to keep warm,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It is hard work, it is really really draining.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it wasn&#8217;t for people like [those at the church] I would be on the streets. I would have committed suicide by now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If I didn&#8217;t have these people I&#8217;d be dead. In a heartbeat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Town Councillor Steven Bletsoe came up with the idea and posted an appeal on Facebook for volunteers to help staff the church throughout the night.<\/p>\n<p>He was pleasantly surprised at the response to the post. He told CJS News: &#8220;We&#8217;ve got 50 people coming tonight to make sure these people are looked after, we&#8217;ve got another 50 people who want to come tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve had donations, we&#8217;ve had clothes, free food, free coffee. It has been amazing how people have come together.<\/p>\n<p>The church&#8217;s Pastor Lem Turner said: &#8220;Tonight all we&#8217;re going to do is offer a safe, warm place, floor space for these guys and girls to come and sleep, to stay the night.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then for the rest of the week depending on how it goes tonight and how many volunteers come forward between now and tomorrow we&#8217;ll probably be doing this as temperature starts to decrease this week.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Samaritans offer support to people who feel in despair on the free helpline 116 123, or\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.samaritans.org\/\">visit the website.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Homeless people have paid tribute to a church for providing beds, food and clothing during the current cold weather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[743,744,750],"tags":[726,1098,779,1482],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19760"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19838,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19760\/revisions\/19838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}