WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Every Monday morning you can find Josephine Truesdale in the kitchen for Samaritan Ministries. It’s not somewhere she thought she’d be while she was in the throes of battling homelessness herself in 1994.

“Sleeping outside like in 13-16-degree weather, some days you don’t have something to eat,” Truesdale said of her time being homeless. “You might eat a pack of Nabs.”

 

       What You Need To Know

  • Josephine Truesdale abused drugs for 20 years and was homeless for five of them 
  • She turned her life around and found a program to help her with her addiction 
  • Once she got clean, she found Samaritan Ministries, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Winston-Salem 
  • Now, she cooks for other homeless people

 

She says she abused drugs for 20 years and was homeless for five of them.

“I got tired of being the way my life was, and I called upon the name of Jesus Christ,” Truesdale said. “I asked the Lord to show me where I could go to help somebody other than myself, and he sent me down here, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Truesdale found herself at Samaritan Ministries in Winston-Salem and wanted to volunteer any way she could. Growing up, she used to watch her mother cook.

“Just looking and learning stuff and then you can do stuff on your own, too,” Truesdale said. “Just get in the kitchen and just start.”

To feed a crowd, it takes a lot. There were probably a dozen or so boxes of pasta in a mac-and-cheese dish she recently made, but she says it’s worth it every single time.

“When they look at you and say, ‘Thank you so much for the meal you gave me today. Thank you so much for just saying ‘Good morning,’ to me, ‘Have a nice day,'’’ she said, smiling.

Truesdale is a popular face in this community, and has even garnered national attention. "Good Morning America" flew her out to New York City in 2019 to honor her for her selflessness and service.

“Oh, it was the most gorgeous thing, but flying on the airplane was absolutely gorgeous. My first time on an airplane, oh my, God. That’s the only way to go is to fly!”