Monday 5/13/2013 Downtown

"After much prayer, ...Dave and his wife Lynn started Children's Hunger Fund out of their garage.  Six weeks after CHF was launched, in January of 1992, he received a phone call from the director of a cancer treatment center in Honduras asking if there was any way he could obtain a certain drug for seven children who would die without it.  Dave wrote down the name of the drug and told the director that he had no idea how to get this type of drug.  They then prayed over the phone and asked God to provide.  As Dave hung up the phone, before he even let go of the receiver, the phone rang again.  It was a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey asking Dave if he would have any use for 48,000 vials of that exact drug!  Not only did they offer him eight million dollars worth of this drug, but they told him they would airlift it to anyplace in the world!  ...Within forty-eight hours, Dave had the drug sent to the treatment center in Honduras and to twenty other locations as well.  It was then he believed firmly that God was at work, validating his calling to this ministry.  The testimony of Dave and Lynn Phillips from the book, "Forgotten God" by Francis Chan (page 135-6).  

Due to our family gathering on Mother's Day, I didn't make the trip until Monday morning.  Weekday trips are like drive-by mercy runs.  Your time with people is so brief that you're barely able to pass food through the window before your forced to drive away due to the traffic.  However, I knew that it was going to be well over 90 degrees downtown and chilled water would be most welcomed by everyone.  Locally, our grocery store had not received any ice in two days and one of the people working there told me that two major stores right nearby hadn't received any either.  I was able to  pick up some ice in another city on the drive into LA.

As kind of an example of how things go during the week, I happened to see a homeless man with a cart on San Pedro St.  I only had moments to talk to him before I had to move on.  This was under the I-10 freeway and normally I would have pulled in and driven down the alley around the warehouse that's there, but the alley was full of parked cars.  I asked the man's for his name and he told me it was Antonio.  He also told me he had lost everything.  I didn't realize until a few minutes later, after pulling away, that he was Leticia's husband, Antonio. I always see them together and that's why I didn't recognize him.  When the homeless lose 'everything', what generally happens is they have to leave their stuff for a little while and when they return it's all gone.  This is a recurring thing with homeless people.  Maybe, they have to leave their stuff to find a bathroom or get something to eat or even take stuff to a recycler.  Unless, your willing to lug your stuff everywhere you need to go, you will eventually lose it and have to start over.

I drove over to 9th St to see if I could find Patrick Morris from last week.  There were cars parked right where he had been laying.  I did see a piece of cardboard on the ground behind one of the cars, but no one was on it.  I'll check back next Sunday and see if he's there.  I did drive over to see John Stokes before I left.  He was there and we talked about when he's leaving.  He hopes to be in Atlanta by July 4th.  Apparently, his family always had a big celebration that day.  I hope he's not disappointed when he gets there.  Sometime around June 3rd he'll start receiving his Social Security checks and then he'll be gone.  I'll miss him.

Well, I gave out all the food and chilled water to go with it and then I had to leave.  This wasn't one of my memorable trips, yet I kept thinking about Jesus' words about giving a "cup of cold water in my name" as being worth something in and of itself.  Perhaps persistence and a life-style of obedience is worth something all by itself.--Until next week.  John