Why Most Christians Get Homelessness Wrong | Tensley Almand

You've been hacked all your money's gone, you know, and then your mortgage company called and there's a problem You know, I think a lot of people think oh man if that happened I would become homeless and the reality is no You're probably 20 to 30 relationships away from ever becoming homeless This is the faithley podcast Today on the faithley podcast, I am really excited to be joined by Tensley Almond He is the president and CEO of Atlanta Mission Atlanta Mission is one of the largest faith-based organizations serving people experiencing homelessness in Atlanta and Tensley brings a pastor's heart and a leader's vision to the work Tensley, welcome to the show Thank you so much, glad to be here So Tensley, you bring a pastor's heart because you are a pastor, you spend many years as a pastor before stepping into leading this important ministry Can you tell us a little bit about that journey? Sure, yeah, no, I mean even my journey into ministry is a fascinating one because I like many people I didn't grow up in church So you know lived here in the south and all of my friends with a church and on Sunday we go to the lake and so it even me finding myself in ministry was a fascinating journey But it gave my life to Christ in college and quickly got called me in a ministry and honestly thought that that would look like serving the local church for my whole life And so did that for 20 years the last 12 of which my wife and I and four of their families started a church here in the city of Decatur right outside of Atlanta And really thought I would do that for the rest of my life It was some of the you know just sweetest times that I can remember you know it was it was great So our whole vision was to create a church that untouched people would love to attend and I can remember probably about 10 years into that journey And the church is just growing it's full it's healthy you're looking around and it was almost like God whispered You know get ready and that's kind of a scary thing but I can remember kind of thinking at that point like I think maybe we've done it like people loved our church and it was growing and even people who didn't go to church with us love their church and they were glad it was in the community And so it kind of I entered this two year period towards the end there where I remember wrestling a lot with that big like what's next question you know And never thought it would mean like leaving that church or starting something different or especially never thought it would be Atlanta mission Not even on my radar but yeah as God you know so often works a friend of mine called me and he knew this search was open And he said hey I think you should apply and I told him he was crazy that said there's no way I'll do that And I did I finally applied and I thought this is this is dumb this is never going to go anywhere And well God used that to totally change my life and change the trajectory of our family's life and I joke but I tell our boards seriously too I spent eight months that's how long the interview process was I feel like I spent eight months trying to talk them out of hiring me and they hired me anyway So I don't know maybe I'm a pretty terrible leader because they they didn't I told them not to do But I'm so glad they did I mean I have never really like apart from being called to plan a church I've never felt more called and placed in my whole life so it's been a it's been a cool journey to get here and I'll stop with this I'll tell you this I think for me the the ultimate and I don't remember exactly where it is but in the new testament in the gospels There's this encounter with the early followers and John the Baptist and basically they asked John like hey You know Jesus is all these crowds are coming and people are gathering and We're not sure what all this means and what it looks like and so they basically ask him like hey what does it mean to follow Jesus And his answer this isn't exactly how it's written but his answer is essentially You you should live a life that is consistent with the one you say you follow and the one you say you believe in And he kind of summed up you know faith in that direction and I can remember God using that in my life to say hey You've been very willing to do that in a setting like starting a church Would you be willing to go do that for the most vulnerable city citizens of a city? Would you be willing to do that for a group of people that most people if we were honest would rather pretend and exist And that kind of wrecked my life that that's really how God used you know scripture and and who he is to push me out of a comfort zone And to something totally different wow I'd love to ask you more about that eight month period Did you know during that time that yes like this is the next step in your calling Did you have to deal with anxiety or impatience because eight months is a really long time The short answer to all of those questions is no because I genuinely didn't think this was the next step I mean I really like the entire thought process through the whole thing was God If you want me there you're gonna have to do it and so it's I don't think this is normal and I'm not recommending this for people But my journey was I mean I I never prepared for an interview I never tried to pretend I never tried to fake I kept telling myself you're smart enough that you can you can convince people to hire you And I could that would be the worst thing ever because I don't want them to hire some version of me that's not real Like if they if they choose to do this they need to know who they're getting and why and so that was really freeing for me Actually I'm I'm not proud of this but I've actually made it hard on them Part of the interview process was over Christmas and I was pastoring a church and Christmas is like the season right and At one point in interview process I got an email that said I needed to be at this meeting the day before Christmas Eve for for an interview And I just told them no I can't and they were they didn't know what to do with that The search firm was like well what do you mean no like you have to be here I said I can't I'm committed to the church I'm leading And there's no way God would say go do this and take away from this thing and I'm not going to do it And they said well then you maybe out and say okay, that's that's fine if I'm out I'm out and they called me back and they said They the Atlanta mission admired that they they're like they respect that and they said they would follow back up with you in January And so yeah that was it wasn't I would tell you I did not think that God was doing something to actually move me Until about halfway through that process and this maybe ties into a little bit about what we want to talk about later I finally asked them like why me why am I here this doesn't make sense to me I'm a pastor And they began to describe what they were looking for you kind of set it in your intro they were looking for somebody with a pastor's heart But who was a visionary leader and who was a systems leader and who was entrepreneurial And I can remember as they described to me what they were looking for in the leader I when I left that interview I called my wife and said I think God's about to mess up our our plans for our future I don't know that I remember exactly I don't know they're going to pick me But I now know why we're here and I'm exactly what they're looking for and that was that was a scary thought Wow thank you so much for sharing that tensly like I know that your story is giving someone encouragement right now Because I think for those of us who have a strong sense of calling in our lives I think when that calling shifts those can be some of the scariest moments And I think being able to do what you did it spoke volumes to the folks who are interviewing you I agree that was one of like personally the thing I wrestled with the most through the process was calling Because I am a little old school I genuinely believe God's called me to ministry And I can remember asking our senior pastor at the time am I turning my back on calling And his answer was so encouraging it was no like I actually think you're going to go be more of a pastor than you ever have before And he was right I mean it has been that so yeah, I think to the person who's wrestling with that calling looks like a lot of things I think we make it smaller than God wants to make it I love it I love it we could end the conversation right now and someone will be inspired and encouraged him last time But let's keep going So tensly when you first stepped into the role as the CEO What would you say surprised you the most about the realities of homelessness in Atlanta? Yeah, I think probably I think probably the biggest surprise to me was just the sheer complexity of it I had no experience with homelessness very little experience with poverty no experience with addiction And all of a sudden I was asked to lead an organization that that's all we do And so from somebody who is able to stay somewhat distant from that situation It's really easy to think that it's you know solutions out of it are easy and they're just not for political reasons They're not easy for personal reasons are not easy for spiritual reasons are not easy For just the systematic reasons of how the systems all work in a city It's not easy when I first started somebody shared this with me they said never forget that homelessness resides at the intersection of broken systems And that is stuck with me for the last almost five years now And I think that's really what you what you see is there's just a lot of broken systems that have gone into somebody finding themselves at a place where they're now unhoused And so therefore the pathway back out of that is just as complex as really the pathway into it And we could argue all day and my hope would be that we could simplify some of those solutions But I think that probably surprised me is just you you would think and I would hope it would be easier for somebody to get back on their feet and find safety and stability and security than it is Yeah yeah well and so a lot of people think it's a housing problem That's right people think it's a it's a simple problem with a simple solution it's complex But what are some of the deeper issues? Sure I'm glad you're asking the question because I do think you know on its surface you know you hear lots of people say homelessness is first and foremost a housing issue And there's no doubt about it it's some point part of the solution has to become stable housing right But one of the things we talk about all the time is if all we do is move somebody into a house without addressing the core issues or their core traumas or identifying the reasons why they're experiencing homelessness to start with And a lot of instances all we've done is moved their homelessness indoors And in fact we've in some ways you run the risk of making it worse because now you've created isolation for a lot of our clients they find a place to stay Well that place to stay is just them by themselves and that just exacerbates some of the problems But yeah I think you know the causes are all over the place and they would I think they would surprise everybody certainly addiction plays a part certainly mental health is a big part But a lot of those addiction and mental health follow homelessness they don't always cause it And I think that's a I think that's a misnomer that a lot of people have Another thing that was kind of going back to your last question that fits here is that was surprising to me is just how many people I met that they literally could have been me They were you know six figure earners at a time or they were highly educated or had came from a good family and you know one bad decision Led them to a pathway of another bad decision to another bad decision and then all of a sudden they found themselves at a place of almost no return So we find that those traumas you know they can be spiritual in nature they can be vocational in nature they can be relational in nature It's it's all over the map of why people are experiencing homelessness Yeah well so how do you work towards long term transformation in this situation? Yeah so at Atlanta mission I think the thing that we're probably most proud of is what we call our transformational model We certainly provide emergency shelter but that's not the only thing that we do and none of this is anything against anybody who does something different Like obviously we need all kinds of models out there because there's all kinds of people out there But for us we looked up one day probably 12 years ago now and realized that you know 80% of the people were with us just over and over and over Again and we weren't ending their homelessness we were we were giving them a nice safe place to stay but they would you know they would show up at our door three or four o'clock in the afternoon Get a meal get a shower get a bed if they chose to go to classes go to some classes and then by seven o'clock the next morning They were back out on the street and then they would repeat the cycle over and over again and we said hey I don't think this is working So we kind of turned that model on its head and we said that the thing that people need first is safety and stability If we can meet that core need and so instead of giving people you know 12 hours of shelter What if we said even in our emergency shelter you could stay with us for 30 days and for 30 days you didn't have to worry about where you're going And we could provide counseling for you we could provide advocates for you we could do some light services with you To try to identify what could we do to help you over the next 30 days get to a more stable solution and that's about 40% of the beds that we offer The other 60% of the beds go to our transformational model which is full wrap around services And those clients are with us for upwards of a year or more and during that time they're getting healthy spiritually vocationally Relationally physically mentally all of those things and we're working with each client to tailor make a program that identifies their trauma Addresses those core causes of their homelessness and then puts them back on a pathway towards self-sufficiency And it all wraps up with a vocational training program that helps our clients not just get a job but keep a job And we find that's a huge thing as well that a lot of our clients are really good at getting jobs and really bad at keeping them And so we give them the soft skill training that things that probably you and I take for granted of conflict management and how do you deal with the workplace environment and all of that And what we're finding is of those clients who go all the way through our program about 70% are they're still housed And they're still maintaining their job a year after graduation Wow Yeah, so it's an incredible program getting a lot of really great results So moving your emergency stay to 30 days have you seen that change like results for your clients? Yeah, it is definitely added safety is definitely added stability 30 days is it sounds like a lot of time it's not I think that's probably one of the places of our greatest frustration as well kind of back to the complexities Most people don't know this you know it can take longer than 30 days to get an appointment at the Social Security office to try to figure out your ID situation And so I think those are some of the things that caused us frustration but it has definitely helped people to stabilize And for many that 30 days is the respite they need to maybe rebuild and repair a relationship So they have some place to go or something like that Yeah, and how do you decide if a client is going to be in your 30 day program or your one year program? It's largely client choice where we are big proponents of dignity and choice and we want to advocate for you and on your behalf And so what tends to happen is a lot of the clients that show up at our doors are not at a place yet where they think they want a year long program And that's just again everybody's journey is different but for a lot of people You know showing up at Atlanta mission or any shelter is a harder decision than most people would ever think When you show up here I say this all the time I feel like Atlanta mission is the most authentic version of church I've ever seen And the reason I say that is because even as a pastor I know that for an hour on Sunday morning Everybody can show up and they can hold it together and they can put their best face on and all looks good Nobody shows up at Atlanta mission in that space And when people show up at our doors it's an admission finally of need something different But even for our clients that sometimes takes two or three times going through our 30 day shelter before they're willing to say Okay I'll give your program a try I need more than just 30 days Something that you've alluded to a few times in this conversation is the importance of relationships And that's something I've heard you talk about is relational poverty being just as devastating as financial poverty Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah I think that was probably another surprise for me getting started And I'll tell you a story in a minute that God used to really just drive that truth home in my own personal life But yes we've seen over and over and over again that relational poverty is absolutely as devastating as material poverty Material poverty alone is devastating right we all know that But when you take material poverty and you couple it with somebody who is completely relationally broken You have no safety net you have nowhere to turn And what we have found to be true for almost all of our clients is that at the root of their homelessness This is typically a wake of broken relationships And the way I try to help people understand this is for you and I and probably all of your listeners If we got that dreaded text message on our phone from our bank that says like You've been hacked all your money's gone and then your mortgage company called and there's a problem I think a lot of people think oh man if that happened I would become homeless The reality is no you're probably 20 to 30 relationships away from ever becoming homeless In fact if you lost everything and if I lost everything tonight we wouldn't be on the street And that's not true for our clients our clients are at a place and have been in this place for long enough They no longer have healthy relationships Many of our clients show up to our doors and they don't even have contacts in their phone Not contacts that they could use And as simple as this may sound to your listeners I mean that's a checkpoint for us is that before you graduate our program Are there three healthy relationships in your phone that you can call that are outside of Atlanta mission Because we can't be your healthy community forever And so a large part of our program is rooted in this idea of getting people rooted in community Here's the story and I think this will drive home When I first started I was brand new I'm still trying to kind of figure out even where my office was like that new And I'm hearing this about relational poverty and I'm thinking okay I don't know maybe I get it somewhat sure At the same time in our personal life my wife and I were navigating a situation with our oldest son Where he had gone to college and he had just collegeed a little too much and we had to bring him home You know a story many people are familiar with and so he had just come back into our home You know all of us him included you're just kind of filled with disappointment It's like this is a story we wanted what are we going to do now And so I got him a job working construction And I was very intentional I called a buddy of mine with a large construction company and I'm like I want you to work him so hard That he realizes he needs to get his act together and go back to school Now here's the cool thing God writes better stories than dads do And he's actually loving that job he is back in school now he is thriving He could own his own construction company one day he's amazing to watch So you know that's great but he gets the job he is his job site is downtown Atlanta And his first day he shows up and they tell him or to park and if you're familiar with Atlanta It's obviously smaller than New York but similar like you just can't park wherever you want like you got to pay attention He's 19 he thinks he knows everything and so he finds a spot that's closer to the job site He's like I'm going to park here and here's the reality He leaves work now he's got the job you know paychecks coming in two weeks health insurance starts in two way All the things like you know that he's got this upper trajectory comes back to his car and there's a boot on his car And he doesn't know what to do and so he calls me and when I answer the phone he says dad I got a problem I got a boot on my car and I'm like oh no that's not a problem there's a number on that boot you call the number And they will tell you how much to pay and then you pay and then you you know they come out and remove the boot you go home And he said dad I have another problem and was like what he goes I don't have any money Like what do you mean you don't have any money I put money in your account Add this probably another conversation but I don't have any money and if I can't get this boot off my car then I can't get home And if I can't get home then I can't get back to work and if I can't get back to work then I don't have a job I'm going to lose my job and I'm not going to get paid all the things And it was I was driving on the road and we're having this call and it was like God was saying I hope you're listening Because the only thing standing between you and or between him and homelessness is is me and the relationship he has with me And I can't tell you how many times I've heard that same story from one of our clients who they were living on the margin Relationally they were living on the margin materially one bad decision parked in the wrong spot I lost the job never got the paycheck now I'm stuck in this city and I have nowhere to go And I think that God used that to show me how powerful healthy relationships in community really are And preventing something like homelessness for people When you stepped into leadership at Atlanta mission you described yourself as chief question officer I love that I am a totally stealing that But so tell me what made you what made you call yourself that like what were some of the questions that you were asking I mean I had no choice I didn't know anything about what we were doing and so I think that was another thing God really used was that season to humble me to say like hey you don't You have no idea what you're even doing so you got to figure it out so the first thing I did is I spent I met with we have about 180 employees I think And I met with every single one who was here at the time 101 for short meetings and I asked everybody what's right what's wrong what's missing and what's confusing And I just took notes and notes and notes and notes and really the answers they gave me began to shape how I decided to lead after that And so I came in and I told the board immediately like hey I don't know enough about what we do is no way I'm going to be able to study strategic vision or direction I've got to ask a lot of questions and so that became the better I can I have a whole notebook I still have it my assistant will you know Sometimes I pull it back out and share just different things and it's really the answers that I got began to form the foundation for the strategic plan that we put together and the direction that we're walking in now And so it created alignment it created unity it showed that I was willing to just humble myself and and learn from everybody else and understand hey what is your perspective of this place and what we do and why we do it And really from there I drove everybody crazy with another set of questions we came up with this kind of clarity index and I just said hey there's there's essentially four questions that every single person should be able to answer And we should answer them all the same and it's you know what are we doing why are we doing it how are we doing it and then where do I fit And so we go back to that talk over and over and over what are we doing that's our mission we exist to you know we transformed through Christ the lives of those who were experiencing homelessness poverty and addiction why are we doing that so all we serve and all who serve have the opportunity to know walk and live for Christ that's why we're doing it Well you know how do we do that well we're a community that's united and homelessness one person at a time and everybody in the organization should know the answer to those questions and then the big question is then where do I fit and that's what turns your job into something far more than a job it turns it into a mission I don't want anybody thinking Well I cook or I clean or I you know work third shift you know it's like no no you're transforming through Christ the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness that's what we're doing so yeah I mean I'm just a big fan of questions I'm a curious person and so I think it I think it would serve a lot of leaders better to ask more questions and to listen more I guarantee your people know they know what's going on in the organization you just gotta ask them hmm that's so good I'm so moved by your leadership style you lead with humility and curiosity and clarity and with a vision now let me ask you this leadership of a Christian nonprofit is it very different from leadership of a church like what did you find was different about leading now versus in a church. I think there's a lot of similarities and I was so fortunate I worked at a great organization that was a really complex big organization I was I was one of many campus pastors all over the city and so I was used to complexity and so that was that helped me a lot. I'm a geek when it comes to organizational leadership like I just I love organizational leadership and so I think having that kind of curiosity towards it anyways was also helpful but yeah it was I mean it was different as I told the board here I've sat at I've sat at the table I've just never said at the head of the table and so being that point leader I learned really quickly I'm. Leadership's pretty easy when there's a day behind you you know in other words when there's a hard decision and you don't like the answer it's like well they did it you know as they you know management team is their fault you know when all of a sudden you're the day leadership is pretty lonely and it's pretty difficult and so I think the biggest differences were the weight of it you know me answering to the board and then the whole organization looking you know they look to you to say hey where are we going and why are we. Going there and so the the weight of that was a lot the complexity you know leading a local church you get to work some with you know local leaders and other things like that leading one of the largest nonprofits in a big city like Atlanta. You talk to a lot more people and there's a lot more people who have a lot of opinions about what you do and don't do and how you should do it and so working with city leaders or politicians or foundations all of that like it's just a it's a different beast and so I definitely had to grow a lot there. Wow I love what you said about when you become the day that sounds like a really awesome leadership book title well I think a lot of people should have to try being the day because it's you know I can remember he I can vividly remember having conversations with my boss when I was one of the lead pastors and just not understanding why I couldn't get one more higher and you know I don't who cares what everybody else thinks just let me have I need this one more higher so obvious and then you know first two weeks here somebody in your office going we need one more higher and you're like we can't do one more here I know you I agree you need it but we can't do it so good one thing that I also imagine must be similar between leading a nonprofit versus leading a church is the challenge of measurement right like I think it's very tempting both in a church as well as at a nonprofit to measure your activity right like it's very quantifiable can you talk a little bit about the challenge of measuring that real transformation that you're looking to achieve. Yeah this was the thing that drove me crazy for the first year and a half while I was here even an interview process I noticed pretty quickly that the front end of our funnel was huge I mean we would serve 3000 people a year and then if you just look at numbers it's like 3000 people through our front door 400 people graduated a vocational program and I'm like wait are we is that all like are we failing every other time and we didn't have really good ways. To identify success along the way and so yes the bullseye was people graduating our program and maintaining their job and maintaining their housing for a year later but that couldn't mean we were failing everywhere else and so what we did as a senior team is we spent a lot of time measuring not just activity but figuring out how to measure behaviors and measure the things that we said were important and so we we tell people we want them to be healthy you know relationally spiritually. Physically emotionally we say what we want you to be rooted in community but what I found out really quickly was every single person on the senior team had a different definition of what each of those things met and so we had no idea if we were doing them well or or not and so we spent a while just defining terms aligning on what those definitions were and then figuring out how we wanted to measure it so that we could create a dashboard as a team to say yes we're moving forward and so now we have really simple ways of measuring again. Not just activity but we're measuring what we feel like is transformation another thing we did is we said our our tagline is hopeless here and so we we fought for a while I say fought like what does hope mean and I you should see some of like our whiteboard sessions where we were trying to define how we would define hope and what we wanted somebody to feel on the other side and we landed in this place where we were able to create literally a hope meter and throughout the time that somebody's with us one of our number one goals is that no matter how long you're here whether it's an hour a day a week a year you should have more hope when you leave here than when you started and so for that's a very simple thing we do forever so it intake if you're an intake specialist one of your number and priorities is does that person on the other side of you feel more hopeful because of their interaction with you even if we don't have a bed for you that night we can still help them be more hopeful we can give hope and so it's been really fun and encourage you to do that. We're encouraging to our team to be able to track something is you know nebulous is hope in a way that we can say no we really are hope does live here and people have more hope the longer they're with us and the more interactions they have with us. Well, so speaking of hope, Tensley Atlanta mission is explicitly Christ centered. How does that show up in what you do and how you do it? Well everybody we remind our staff all the time our faith informs why we serve it doesn't inform who we serve I think that's been a really refreshing part of doing this work is that we will serve anybody that comes to our door now for us we align as an organization around faith but that faith should be the vehicle we use that helps people feel invited in and so it's been so encouraging to watch people who show up at our door. And they don't necessarily want anything to do with our faith they're like hey this is last resort for me you know whatever and watch as God opens their hearts over time as they're around our staff and as they get to experience firsthand the love of Christ. It's remarkable now you see people open up in some really fantastic ways and we watch people choose to decide to become followers of Jesus as a result of being a part of our program. We've also had people go all into a program and decided that's still not for me and and that's okay like that's you know hey we're we can still help you in your homelessness now we think Jesus as a big part to play in that and we think that that's part of getting healthy. But it's been really cool to just be able to show up for a city. And serve and I think that's one of the compliments we love the most is that even people who don't believe like us they're really glad we're here and they're they're like actually fine and excited that we do it in the name of Jesus you know that's awesome you're here doing something for the city that nobody else is doing. That's really cool so as you know 10th we have a lot of church leaders who listen to this podcast I want to switch gears a little bit and ask some questions around how churches can help how they should get involved so many churches want to be a part of addressing homelessness but they're not always sure how to start. In your experience what are some of the most helpful ways that churches can engage I think I know people aren't sure where to start but I would just say start that's the most helpful like for my small group we started serving at Christmas we would serve once a year Christmas and now I think every single person in that small group has some personal ministry within Atlanta mission. That goes beyond just us and I mean it was so simple we were we show up every year with like 30 or 40 gingerbread house kits and we sit in the cafeteria with our kids that are staying with us with their mom and we build gingerbread houses together for two hours and the kids just love it and it's amazing and so I mean I think every single person has something that they can offer what I walked through one of our campuses one day and out in the courtyard somebody was doing yoga and I was like what is going on they're like oh. She's a yoga instructor and she showed up at our door and was like hey is there anything I can do with my talent that would make people's lives better we're like yes absolutely there is and so now she teaches the yoga class you know once a week and everybody has something to offer whether they realize it or not I think again back to the misconceptions about the people we serve. It's a great book so it's called same kind of same kind of different as me and I think if we all just understood that is that we're all just the same kind of different like it's everybody's different and we're all different and so the person who's staying with us versus the person who are not are far more similar than we realize and you have talents and abilities so just jump in. We talk a lot about or I talk a lot about some of our projects are due for service opportunities and some are be with and I think figuring out for you what makes most sense do for is like hey I'm going to come help beautify the campus I'm going to come serve a meal I'm going to you know do something in the grounds to make it prettier I'm going to do something for somebody else and those are great at a level we need them. But the be with projects are really special that's like the gingerbread house that's just we have a we do a once a month birthday party for every kid who's having a birthday that month and just to come to a birthday party for a bunch of kids like who doesn't want to throw a birthday party like that's that's awesome. So no matter if you're in Atlanta or wherever if you would think about opportunities is you know is this a moment that I can do something for somebody or should I go be with somebody because again back to that relational poverty. You have no idea what it does especially in the life of a child to have two hours around somebody where they genuinely feel loved and cared for and that might be the first time in their life that they feel that in a way that you have to offer. Wow that's so good let me let me bring a conversation to a close with this final question tensly which is you know you are working on the front lines of some very difficult human realities every day like what keeps you hopeful and keeps you going every day. Every day our clients my predecessor told me and I have held onto this for the four and a half almost five years I've been here every time I start to feel hopeless or the job starts to fill overwhelming I just go be with our clients they are so inspiring our staff also I mean they're so inspiring the way they show up. We yeah we get to deal with some hard things we get to deal with frustration you know there's definitely you know no matter what you do somebody doesn't like it or isn't happy with it so yeah it can feel it can feel hard and heavy but our clients are what keep me going. When you see somebody come through our doors and then a year later you watch them walk out of our doors it's yeah you'll get up and do it again the next day wow wow thank you for sharing that and thank you for this conversation tensly we've covered a lot of ground and I feel like I've gotten so much fresh insight into leadership into nonprofit leadership and also into the state of homelessness like I'm here in New York City where it is a real. It is a real and daily reality for us here as well and I feel like I've gotten fresh insight and wisdom into how I and the church that I'm that I'm a part of can can engage in that so thank you absolutely if you have the opportunity to look up the Bowery we're connected with them love what James and his team are doing great organization in New York and so I would encourage you it's a great place to get involved amazing amazing thank you tensly really appreciate your time today and hope to continue the conversation another day. Absolutely thanks for having me on Alicia.