MARYSVILLE – For emergency cold weather shelters, this winter will go down as a season that closed the shelter doors in Marysville while churches scrambled to provide temporary locations, and broke records for overnight stays in Arlington.

Church leaders have spent the last two weeks trying to come up with a short-term solution for a homeless shelter after the Marysville Emergency Cold Weather Shelter closed Feb. 1.

Shelter director Zoe Wlazlak and ministerial leaders have been in discussions with numerous pastors. The Foursquare Church has opened its doors a few nights.

“This week, volunteer involvement has ramped up to see how more churches can come in and share in offering shelter services at other locations, so that has been encouraging,” Wlazlak said.

Meanwhile, others have explored securing rental space, but costs and other issues have held back that option, Wlazlak said. She said the announcement about Damascus Road Church no longer being available to serve as a shelter came as a surprise.

“There has been a lot of ups and downs the past couple of weeks,” she said. “It was heartbreaking at first.”

Greg Kanehen, Marysville Free Methodist Church pastor, chaplain and executive director of Marysville Crisis Support Services, said that if churches can pull together to provide shelter over the next few weeks, it will buy time for a more permanent solution next year.

“We’re trying to band-aid the shelter needs the rest of the season through March,” Kanehen said.

Whether that results in a permanent location or a shelter system like Arlington operates, time will tell.

Arlington operates its shelter on a rotating basis among five churches. Deena Jones, lead pastor at Arlington United Church, said the number of nights open since November, 41, is a record-breaker, nearly double what was reported last year – and there are still six weeks to go.

The cold weather has resulted in larger-then-usual statistics for Marysville’s shelter as well, Wlazlak said. The shelter was averaging 12 overnighters, with occasional nights of up to 36 homeless.

Wlazlak recounted how the shelter idea originated. Pastor Victor Rodriguez at Marysville Free Methodist Church and others began discussing opening a shelter after two people died from exposure during severe overnight winter conditions.

In 2013, as a joint effort between seven Marysville churches, Damascas Road Church said it would serve as a single location if the other churches helped staff it with volunteers. The other churches include: Allen Creek Community Church, Free Methodist, Foursquare, Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Mountain View Presbyterian Church and Marysville Church of the Nazarene.

Wlazlak said the shelter has received phenomenal support from community members, service clubs and businesses. She became involved early on. “A voice in my head said, ‘You can help with that,’” she recalled.

Wlazlak started out doing laundry, coordinated and volunteered for weeknight shifts, then eventually took over as director.

“It’s one of the most amazing things that has happened to me,” she said.

Volunteers are awestruck by how Wlazlak can stop by the shelter at all hours while she and her husband raise their two young boys. She is also a senior pursuing her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

How does she balance it all? “I don’t sleep much,” she said. “At the end of a shelter week, I’m less buoyant and bubbly.”

She reminds herself that when she is at the shelter, she sees the homeless guests who had things stolen, with nowhere to go, and just wanting a place to relax. “I know how fortunate I am to have what I’ve got.”

The Marysville location served many kinds of people.

“There’s a story for every person, and it’s always different,” she said. The last three years, “it has mostly been people going through financial tough times, people who live in a car or can’t get back on their feet again, and domestic violence victims getting out of a bad situation.”

She added that there are disabled homeless, too. They can be on 10 lists for help, but they’re so far down that they end up on the street while they wait. Also, they don’t have bus fare, so they can’t get to appointments.

This year, Wlazlak said, volunteers have also seen the influence of the drug epidemic like never before.

Ultimately, she said, “Our goal is just to try to make a place so they don’t die on the street.”