Love For Lancaster’s mission involves forming encouraging and supportive friendships with homeless people living on Lancaster Ave., said Linnea Larson, a member of Love For Lancaster.

Love For Lancaster is a religious student organization on campus that carpools to the Lancaster Ave. area of Fort Worth to spend time with the homeless multiple times a week.

According to the student organizations page on the student affairs web site, Love For Lancaster’s aspiration is to show [the homeless] encouragement, love and to serve each person [they] interact with the best way [they] know how.

“The TCU bubble is very small and outside of it there’s this bubble over here,” Larson said.

“We kind of just want to merge the two bubbles and make it where it’s not weird when we come down here and it’s not weird when they come to us.”

Timothy Knowles, a resident of Lancaster Ave., spends time with the organization when they visit.  Knowles said he looks forward to seeing TCU students come out and share the Word with him and others on the street.

Knowles called the members of Love For Lancaster his “best friends.”

“They don’t expect nothing from us and we don’t expect nothing from them,” Knowles said.

The religious affiliation of the organization also plays a role in their work, Knowles said.

“They teach [us] what the Bible actually tells us what to do,” Knowles said. “They’re out here evangelizing in the name of Jesus, which is good thing, real good thing because a lot of these people don’t have Christ in their heart.”

Love For Lancaster began making trips to Lancaster Ave. early in the fall semester of 2011, Larson said. The organization was formed when a group of students went to Lancaster Ave one night after Ignite.

“They felt like ‘why are we standing in church singing when we should be out serving’, and so they kind of came down and felt called to this area,” Larson said. “There were actually a few people going down by themselves and we kind of merged together.”

The organization is always looking for new members, and the more they have, the better, Larson said.  The more people they can be around and bring hope to makes the experience more meaningful for both the organization and the residents of Lancaster Ave.

To find out more information about Love For Lancaster, you can visit their Facebook page.