South Main ministry houses cancer patients who sojourn in Houston

HOUSTON (ABP)—Imagine being 800 miles from home receiving radiation treatments while bouncing from hotel to hotel—or having to live out of a car or hospital lobby. Thanks to a housing ministry of South Main Baptist Church in Houston, Kentuckian Rhonda Blackburn doesn’t worry about living arrangements while being treated for pancreatic cancer in Texas.

“You can’t measure what that means,” Blackburn, 58, said of Sojourn House, a group of 16 apartments for out-of-town patients of Houston’s famous medical complexes. The one-bedroom units rent for $39 a day, are fully furnished and include utilities and cable television.

Ken Hamilton, left, and Ken Blackburn talk at the Brompton Court Apartments in Houston. Sojourn House leases 16 units there, which are used to house cancer patients like Blackburn’s wife, Rhonda (Jeff Brumley/ABPnews)“This place is set up,” said Blackburn’s husband, Ken. “You bring your clothes and get some food for the kitchen, and there’s no lease. You leave when you want to leave.”

Sojourn House, which leases its units from a privately owned apartment complex, is part of a coalition of similar ministries run by 10 churches in the city. The Church Apartment Ministry is composed of South Main Baptist and Church of Christ, Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations, providing about 65 apartments altogether.

Each of the members refers potential residents to each other when one group doesn’t have a vacancy, said Ken Hamilton, a volunteer director of Sojourn House.

The larger apartment ministry operates from an office at South Main Baptist, staffed by volunteers. About 150 South Main members volunteer for the Sojourn House ministry, including Sunday school classes arranging welcome packages and gift bags. Others clean the units to standards meant to aid patients with immune systems damaged by cancer treatments.

But the volunteers are helped as much as the visitors, Hamilton said. “I get a lot of witness myself just seeing people, who are probably at the worst point of their life, turn things over to the Lord,” he said.

Pastor Steve Wells at South Main Baptist Church (Jeff Brumley/ABPnews)Sojourn House is an effort to serve Christ by serving people experiencing severe challenges in life, said Steve Wells, pastor at South Main Baptist.

“It is an intentional ministry of Christian hospitality,” Wells said. “It is to serve ‘the least of these’ by caring for people in Jesus’ name.”

A related ministry with the same focus is Friends of Sojourn, whose volunteers adopt residents to help ease their transition to life in Houston. They pray for the residents daily and contact them at least once a week. Many also deliver gifts, food and various necessities, said Paul Falls, a Sojourn House volunteer director.

A church member who noticed people living in hospital lobbies and in cars as they visited Houston for medical treatment founded Sojourn House at least four decades ago.

“We’ll still get people living in cars and lobbies,” Falls said. “But it’s better than it used to be.”

Sojourn House residents testify to that, and often describe the ministry as divinely inspired.

Fred Bridge of New Jersey has been undergoing chemotherapy for lung and liver tumors for two months and began his stay in Houston with uncertainty about his living arrangements. Bridge would spend a night or two in a hotel and then get bumped because of a big event in Houston. The concierge at MD Anderson referred Bridge, 72, to Sojourn House.

“It’s the grace of God,” said Bridge, who is Catholic. “I was getting thrown from hotel to hotel.”

Rhonda Blackburn learned about Sojourn House through an encounter in a hospital cafeteria with a South Main church member also undergoing cancer treatment. Blackburn, who’s Baptist, sees that encounter as God acting in her life.

The Brompton Court Apartments, where Sojourn House leases the units, is located just a few miles from MD Anderson and other Houston hospitals and treatment centers. A shuttle leaves the complex every 15 minutes for the medical complex.

Sitting in a recliner just a few hours after a radiation treatment, Blackburn said Sojourn House takes the sting out of being away from home while fighting cancer. “You can just be relaxed,” she said.