Tuesday night downtown-7/28/2015

But for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self -control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.  For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. --2 Peter 1:5-9

OK, so the last two weekends I have had to work so I couldn't make a trip downtown.  Tonight I could so I went down there, kind of late.  I drove to 25th and San Pedro where I had the dinner on the sidewalk back in November, but no one was there.  That's the first time no one has been there since I've been going there for well over a year.  There were some people in the next alley towards 24th though, so I drove down there and stayed with them a while.  There were a couple of new people I hadn't met before.  One man, whose name was Miguel, was very thankful for the food.  I gave out sandwiches to everyone (about 5 or 6 people) and then handed out the last of the socks I had.  Later, when I noticed Miguel only had some sandals on I dug around in the back of the car and came up with a pair of shoes.  Socks aren't much help if you don't have shoes to wear right?  (Although socks will keep your feet warm at night when your sleeping.)  I prayed for Miguel separately and then for everyone there.  That was a good stop.  I asked about Hiram who lived on 25th and San Pedro and one of the women there said he has finally gotten an SRO place on 21st.  I'll have to find out exactly where so I can go and visit him.  I really like seeing Hiram.

I gave a couple of sandwiches out to some people in another ally behind the Auto Zone store on Washington and Griffith and then drove over to Trinity St and saw Antonio and Leticia (yes she had me pray for her too) and around the block I found Lee on Washington Blvd.  She's usually on Trinity too, but not tonight.

I was down to one last sandwich and found a guy on 9th at Maple.  He was sitting up inside his make shift boxes/shelter with just his head sticking up.  I drove passed him, but stopped and backed up so I could offer him the last of the food.  Another man was walking by him and he bummed a cigarette off him.  When I pulled up I wanted to take his picture sitting behind the box, but thought better of it because I didn't want to offend him, so I just offered the food and water.  When he got up to come over, he didn't have any shoes or socks on.  I don't know if he didn't have any, or just didn't have them on, but he kind of hobbled over to me.  I was out of both shoes and socks anyway, so I couldn't offer him anything more besides the food and water.  He was appreciative of those though.  His name was Victor.  I look for him again next time.  --Until then.  John

Downtown 7/5/2015

When Jesus saw the large crowd coming toward him , he asked Philip, 'Where will we get enough food to feed all these people?'  He said this to test Philip, since he already knew what he was going to do.  Philip answered, 'Don't you know that it would take almost a year's wages just to buy only a little bread for each of these people?'  Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the disciples.  He spoke up and said, 'There is a boy here who has five small loaves of barley bread and two fish.  But what good is that with all these people?' ---John 6:5-9

After last week's meeting with a group of men on 9th near San Pedro I had promised to return to them again this week.  I have been trying to figure out how to maximize the small resources I have to purchase food and decided to finally buy the ingredients to make more food available.  I have resisted this primarily because there may be some liability issues that I'm not prepared for.  I have done the BBQ's though which is the same thing and have had no problems, so I decided to give this a test run and bought a bunch of lunch meat and bread and made my own.  So now the preparations for these trips is a lot more than before and if you pretty much give everything out in one stop the trip is far shorter than the prep time.  Anyway, so be it, it allows more time to pray for the people I'll be seeing. Also, I won't be seeing a large group every week and having more food available means reaching more people.  Have you noticed how planning and logistics are playing a prominent role now?  I usually buy enough food to give out to 8 people.  This week the plan was to have a sandwich for twelve people.

I got off the freeway at about 5:45 pm and found three people needing help before I got to 9th and San Pedro.  When I got there about 7 men and 1 woman were there initially.  A couple of others came by after all the food was given out.  So I had nine sandwiches to give out to the eight original people and then one man had asked for another one (he practically begged me for it). How could I refuse? When I pulled up Gustavo, who I had met a couple of months ago with another man named Red were both there.  Gustavo had a microphone and speaker and he was just yakking away in Spanish.  I'm not really sure what he was talking about, I think he was just narrating life there in the parking lot. He actually offered to give me the microphone to preach.  I told him when it's time to pray OK, but that was it.  Most of these men understand very little English although Gustavo is fluent in both languages.  Perhaps another time he can interpret for me. But when it was time to pray, Gustavo got everyone up and holding hands together and as I prayed he held the microphone up so it picked up the prayer time.  A short time after this Red brought another man up to me by the name of Miguel Gomez. Miguel was in tears.  Red told me that he had gone to a hospital/clinic for a pain in his side and small back area.  They couldn't help him.  I said let me pray for him right now.  So I turned Miguel around and with my right hand on his shoulder and my left hand on his side I prayed for the pain to go away.  I don't know if it helped or not, but he kept thanking me and said "God bless you." repeatedly.  The only thing I can add to this is that when I was told Miguel had an ailment, I didn't hesitate to pray for him, it was such an automatic response to the situation.  I don't think I've ever felt quite that way before in similar situations.

Well, I had reloaded the car with shirts since the last visit and they all went through the clothes,so that was a big hit again.  I gave out hugs to just about everyone.  It was another good visit and time well spent with these folks. Its so hard to describe what it feels like to bring the Kingdom of God to folks caught in life's hopeless situations.  I really love these people and the opportunities God has given me to help them.  Here's some photo's of the trip:

 That's Red with his back to the camera and Julio, from last week, with his USA shirt on below.

This is Miguel Gomez, the one with the back pain.

A fitting end to a great trip.--Until next time. --John