This was quoted by our pastor Sunday morning in his sermon. I thought it was a terrific quote and captured my feelings towards the homeless in Los Angeles. Last week's trip was sort of an attitude adjustment for me. I guess every so often we can get a little out of whack in the things we do even when our intentions are good. I never want this ministry to be routine or to be done in a hurry. These people need my full attention when I'm with them. I remember when Mother Teresa died one of the nuns assisting in the work there in India said if they were troubled or preoccupied about a problem they were not allowed to work with the destitute until they were over their problem. I have now seen the value in this policy first hand. It goes hand in hand with another of her quotes, "I think being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, is a much greater hunger, and much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." Sunday, I was determined to put these people first and foremost again. It turned out to be a wonderful trip.
Instead of going early Sunday before church I decided to go afterwards so I had no time constraints. I got downtown about 1:30 in the afternoon and went to an alley off Hooper St. that I've gone down many times before. The last few times no one has been there. This trip was different though. As I started down the alley I saw a man sleeping in the shade of one of the buildings. I wanted to be able to park and get out of my car and talk wih him so I backed out of the alley and drove around to the other end and came in from the other direction. Before I could get to him I found two other homeless men living in the alley. Both I've met before and one greeted me quite warmly and stood up when he saw me coming. His name is Willie (see first photo). Across from him and a few feet down the alley on the sunshine side was "Tera Lee". When I met him before he identified himself as Johnny. He remembered me from the last time when he was down near the Staples Center.
He had a skin rash at the time which he still has and warned me against touching him (second photo-Willie standing next to where Tara Lee was inside his home)
. I was able to give them food, water and clothing and prayed with both of them. Willie said he had been staying in an alley on the other side of the next street down until the police ran all the homeless people out of there. I noticed he had a good pair of shoes on and he told me he got them at the Fred Jordan Mission. I was glad to see him and that he was doing OK. I joked with him about his "bed". It was a plastic toddler's slide. I told him it looked comfortable if you had curvature of the spine. We both laughed about that one. I drove on down to the other end of the alley, parked and got out and looked in on Pablo from Cuba. He was sound asleep but when I asked him if he needed some food he woke up quickly and said yes. I gave him a bag of food which he started eating immediately (see photo). I gave him some water and while we talked he
continued to eat and drink from the water jug. I had a little difficulty understanding him. He seemed to have a problem and wanted to know if I knew of a place that could help him. It turned out he was looking for a 'rehab' place. I asked him if he had tried the missions down on 6th St and he told me they were all filled up. I told him I didn't know of any around in the area where he was but I'd ask around. I noticed the shoes he had next to him were pretty worn-out and asked if he could use a new pair. He said yes to that too so I looked in the trunk of my car. I had a pair that were about the right size but I couldn't find any size label anywhere so I told him to try one of them on. When he pulled the blanket back to try on the shoe his socks were so worn-out that the heels were gone on both of them and they were almost like sock slippers. I gave him two new pairs and prayed with him about his drug problem. He told me he "had a bad problem". I gave him some extra food. --Please pray for Pablo.After leaving this alley I drove down to the alley that Willie said they had been kicked out of. I've driven past this alley many times but never really looked at it as an alley. It just seemed to be the back side of the businesses there. I did find Ricardo there. He was stopped with his bicycle and was rearranging some bags on the handle bars. He told me he had been here in America for "dos anos" and his wife and family were still in Mexico. He was barely getting by. I ended up giving him a bunch of stuff including a bible tract in Spanish. I prayed with him too. I've really got to learn how to pray a basic prayer in Spanish with these folks. When I left Ricardo I continued down the real alley part of this section. Up to where I found Ricardo it was paved and more of a parking lot type area, but after that the "alley" wasn't paved and was in terrible condition. I can't understand why anyone would be kicked out of there because I can't imagine why anyone would be driving down that section of the alley.
From there I crossed Central Ave and drove down 14th St. I only went a couple of blocks and saw a couple with a shopping cart on a corner. I turned around and parked next to them and got out. The man's name was Sam and he recognized me from a few weeks back. The woman's name was Teresa. Teresa was not talkative and not in a good mood. Sam told me she was OK but I knew she was either tweaked out or coming down off of drugs. While I was helping these two out, another man by the name of Terry walked over from across the street. He needed some help too and saw I was giving Sam and Teresa some food and clothing. When I gave them all they wanted out of what I had I prayed with the whole group. Yeah, it was pretty cool, I put my arms around Sam and Terry and Sam held Teresa's hand and I prayed for God's blessing on them. I can't tell you how much I love being able to do this with these people!
Believe it or not I was now out of bags of food. It had taken maybe an hour to reach these seven people. I've learned to throw some extra food (cans of vegetables and boxes of cookies) in the back of the car just in case I run into extra people. So here I was not wanting to leave yet, but being pretty much out of food. I think I had three cans of vegetables and a couple of boxes of cookies. I had an idea in the morning of walking down one of the alleys off Washington Blvd where a lot of homeless people live. I've seen up to 6 people there early on Sunday mornings. I drove over there and parked at the street at the end of the alley. I was glad I didn't drive down it because Sunday there was a lot of broken glass on one end, like someone had dumped some car windows in the alley. Anyway, I walked up and down the alley praying for the people who lived there. No one was there but there were at least three places where people lived, they just weren't "home" when I was there. I walked around to the front of the buildings. I had seen at least one church on the other side on Sunday mornings and this Sunday there were a group of people standing in front of one of the other buildings there. It turns out they were looking to rent one of the buildings so they could have a church there too. I told them of all the homeless
living on the back alley and that they could have an immediate missions outreach there. I walked on up the street to Washington Blvd. Asleep on the sidewalk near the corner was the man in the photo. He never did wake up. I prayed over him and left a Spanish bible tract next to him and walked on around and back down the alley; there still wasn't anyone there. When I returned from a short-term missions trip to Nepal six years ago I started prayer-walking in the area around my church at the time. That ministry morphed into the original www.rightnowcounts.org website with messages geared for non-believers and believers alike. When I walked down this alley yesterday I started thinking about how simply prayer-walking was how this all started for me. I think each week I go downtown I'll prayer-walk down this alley off Washington Blvd. Who knows what God can do with it. It's an alley where
people seem to just dump their trash and drive away, but people created in the image of God live there too. I wonder what He wants to do with this turf. I think He wants to reclaim and redeem lost souls here. It will be a long-term project, but let's see what happens. Until next week. By the way, before leaving downtown I gave away the rest of the food I had left in the car. --John
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