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Last winter they came to church, seeking not God or deliverance, but a warm place to sleep through the coldest months.

Several churches became winter emergency shelters for those left homeless because of an addiction, the spiraling economy or just bad luck.

Here, these lost men and women found shelter and support.

Many moved on after the temporary shelters closed to get jobs and find places to call home.

The economy brought Donald Moore and Larry Coles to Pleasant Garden Baptist Church last winter. Both lost jobs and with that, a place to spend the night.

Moore, 50, arrived at the church first. He was laid off from his job driving a van for the disabled and spent about a year homeless, going from friend to friend, couch to couch. Sometimes, when there was nowhere left to go, he would curl up under a bridge.

He encouraged Coles to give Pleasant Garden’s shelter a try, too. Coles, 37, and his girlfriend had both lost their jobs shortly before Thanksgiving 2008. His girlfriend, pregnant with their daughter at the time, returned home to Martinsville, Va., to live with her mother so she could afford to take care of the baby.

She and the baby, now nine months old, are back in Greensboro with Coles. The new parents are both working at fast-food restaurants, living with friends to save money for their own place.

Moore also found a place to stay. With the help of a church member, Moore and two other men from the shelter are renting a house. He’s working part time at the shelter and picking up trucking jobs through a friend. He hopes to line up permanent work as a truck driver in the new year.

He shares his story with the new men at the shelter.

“I know if I can get through it, you can, too,” Moore tells them.

Coles said that when he heard the shelters were opening again this winter, he didn’t hesitate to volunteer. He stays overnight most nights to help monitor activities, just as someone volunteered last year to monitor the shelter when he was there.

“This is the only way I feel like I could repay them,” Coles said.

Some nights, Coles and Moore are reunited through their work at the shelter. Both say they’re thankful for the church’s love and support.

“By the grace of God … we’re making it,” Moore said. “It’s been a struggle. But we’re making it.”

Randy Farmer spent four months in jail last year before pleading guilty to stealing about $12,000 from a family member. The stolen money created a rift between him and his younger sister, Beverly Fields of Climax.

She thinks her older brother’s Army service in Vietnam led to post-traumatic stress disorder, causing him to jump from job to job. He was married twice and had three children but did not support them, Fields said.

“I just never understood why he lived his life like he did because he was so smart,” Fields said. “I used to look up to him when I was a little girl.”

She said her brother also had a gambling problem.

“He kept buying lottery tickets,” Fields said. “I think he thought one day he would hit it big.”

Instead, he hit bottom. In June 2008, he was sentenced to three years of probation for forging checks on his elderly mother’s account, police and court records show. When he got out of jail, he went from shelter to shelter, Fields said.

Fields lost touch with him.

She found him again early last year in the most unexpected place: the church down the road.

Farmer, 60, was one of 20 homeless men spending their nights at Pleasant Garden Baptist Church’s new winter emergency shelter — the same shelter for which Fields and a few friends had knitted scarves to help out.

He was “just a neat, fun guy,” said the Rev. Michael Barrett.

“Our people just really befriended him, reached out to him, connected with him,” he said.

They visited Farmer in the hospital, where he ended up after only a month at the shelter. Doctors told Farmer he had lung cancer.

He told a younger brother, with whom he had kept in touch, and the brother told Fields.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to visit her brother, who had moved into housing with help from the Veterans Administration.

Then her younger brother called again to say Farmer had taken a turn for the worse and was back in the hospital.

It was there that Farmer found his way home again.

“He said he was sorry for what he had done,” Fields said. “I told him there was nothing he had done that the Lord wouldn’t forgive him for.”

Farmer died the next day.

She is thankful she had that brief time with her brother, a chance to offer forgiveness and to say goodbye. Pleasant Garden’s shelter helped make that possible, she said.

She asked the church to conduct her brother’s funeral service. Some of the men who stayed with him at the shelter spoke about her brother, and many of the church members attended.

“Through the Pleasant Garden Baptist Church, he found friendship and love, and he also found the Lord,” Fields said. “I think that was one of the most important things that happened to him by going to that shelter.”

All she needed was a break. A chance to turn her life around.

By age 49, Mary Warren’s drug and alcohol addiction had led to a life on the streets of Greensboro. She slept under bridges and in building alcoves — wherever she found shelter and safety — for a year.

But after she cleaned up from the drugs, Warren couldn’t catch a break. Last year, she left a job interview at a local nursing home in tears. They didn’t have a place for a woman who looked like Warren — bedraggled, dirty, destitute.

She found salvation in Grace Community Church’s community room, which had been converted into a temporary homeless shelter.

“I thought I was going to be homeless this year, too, when things started turning around with God’s help,” she said.

At Grace’s shelter, Warren was able to shower and better prepare herself for job interviews. Church members helped her make connections that led to a job.

When the three-month winter shelter program ended, Grace paid the deposit and first month’s rent for Warren’s apartment.

“Everything’s going good so far,” Warren, now 50, said on a recent Friday while visiting Grace’s shelter. She spent Wednesday and Friday nights volunteering there in December.

“It makes me feel grateful that I can try to help other people, to let them see things can change if you let it and let people help you,” she said.

Warren would volunteer more, but she starts classes again this month for her GED. Once she earns the high school equivalency diploma, she plans to enroll at GTCC to obtain a certificate as a certified nursing assistant.

Meanwhile, she continues to attend worship services at Grace, which has become like a second family to her.

Marsha Cole, who oversees Grace’s shelter, said she is proud of how far Warren has come.

“We had a lady who came in the 15th of December who was lost,” Cole said. “She was lost in a lot of ways, and she’s finding her way home. ... She has come many miles.”

Warren was the only guest who never missed a day at the shelter last winter, Cole said.

“She has won the hearts of a lot of ladies in the church. A lot of people have a very deep respect for Mary,” Cole said. “Whether she realizes it or not, she has impacted a lot of lives.”

Warren said she has worked hard to maintain her new life.

“And I’m gonna hold on to it.”

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com