Monday, February 29, 2016

Downtown 2/28/2016

"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.  Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.  ---1 Corinthians 13:2-8a.

Sorry its taken so long to make a blog entry, but I've had to work an extra day or two for four weeks in a row.  I've made trips the last three weekends, but its been difficult with limited time after working the extra days to write one.  This weekend was the first full weekend in a while, so I'll try and give a quick recap of the highlights of the last three trips.

I had a memorable encounter three weekends ago with a young man named Jason.  He was on a side- walk just east of Los Angeles St and Venice.  We must have talked for forty minutes.  I had asked him if he was hungry when I drove up and when he came over to the car I ended up praying for him through the car window. During the prayer he asked if I would get out and "do this right".  I'm sure he was lonesome for someone to talk to who wasn't asking for anything in return.  He was recently unemployed, but had been employed for a while.  However, his employer was very difficult to get along with and he finally had had enough. With no back-up support system (ie. family) here he was on the street.  He had a girl friend and got along well with her and her family, but since he was unemployed he felt very insecure and inadequate being around them.  Where he was when I saw him was just south of the garment district. I wouldn't have thought of the garment district as being very dangerous, but he told me he had been accosted two or three times walking through there so he walked around it now. Incidentally, that is the area where he had worked.  We talked about his work situation, his girl friend and her family and even the knife wounds he suffered.  We must have prayed three different times about different issues. One of the things he asked me about was drug use.  It seems there were several people he is acquainted with who asked him to participate with them in using drugs and when he refused he was considered "condescending".  I told him wasn't being condescending, it was a display of "character" instead.  Substance abuse is a very subtle trap and my advice was to stay away from it at all costs.  In the end, I told Jason I come down here generally every Sunday evening and I'll look for him if he's in this same spot.  He told me he would be here if he isn't in San Diego.  I think that's where his girl friend and her family live.  Anyway, that's the way we left it.  I promised I'd be back the next Sunday.

The next Sunday when I got off the freeway at Los Angeles St I saw a homeless man digging through the trash cans at the corner of Los Angeles and Venice.  Instead of turning east on Venice I drove on through the intersection on Los Angeles St and called out to him when I got to the corner across the street.  "Hey are you hungry?" He said yes, but as he answered me he recognized me.  I told him to wait there and I'd drive around the block and come back to him.  It turns out it was a man named Gary who I knew and helped many times about three years ago when he was living in an alley behind the auto parts store down the street on Washington Blvd.  It was pure joy to see him again because I had often wondered what happened to him many times in the last three years.  He told me he was living on 17th just east of San Pedro Blvd.  There are a lot of folks living on that street now, but by the time I get there, they are usually in their make-shift homes for the night.  We got caught up on the last three years, he had just gotten over a bout with pneumonia that had him in the hospital for a month.  He had his shopping cart and had been recycling all day, it was now time to get over to the recycler by the Jack in the Box on Alameda before they closed.  I gave him a couple of sandwiches and water, some clothes and a blanket.  As we talked we heard a car coming down the street east on Venice.  It was making a lot of noise that turned out to be a flat tire.  It was the Honda version of a Bronco.  The man driving the car pulled into the drive-way where we were standing and talking.  He parked close by and when he got out he asked if I had a jack.  I got one out of the back of my car along with the T-bar to undo the lug nuts.  Gary was lobbying to change the tire for the man to earn a couple of dollars, but the man said he didn't have any money to give him.  Well, Gary was still needing to get to the recycler before it closed at 7 pm (it was now 5:15 pm) so he took-off and I was left with the man with the flat tire and his family.  His wife and mother and two you girls were with him.  The jack I had given him got the car up high enough to get the flat off, but not high enough to get the spare on.  I looked around the alley for something to put under the jack to get it to go higher, but thought I'd look in my car for something else to use.  It turned out that I had another jack, the second one was the one for my car and the first one was an extra one I had gotten for another car a long time ago.  So he was able to use the second jack to get the actual wheel up high enough to get the spare on it.  The only problem was, when he lowered the car down the weight of the car was too much for the spare.  There wasn't enough air pressure in the spare to handle it and it was essentially flat when he removed the two jacks.  Luckily, I had one of those tire inflators that plug into a cigarette lighter.  So another fifteen minutes or so and the tire was inflated to it's proper level. During all this time we talked.  I had noticed that they were kind of dressed up and he told me they had just gotten out of church.  They lived in Santa Ana.  I told them how I knew Gary and that I came down here to help minster to the homeless folks in the area.  I told them a couple of stories about my experiences down there.  One of which involved helping a young Latino man a few years ago named Alex not too far from where we were right then. I told them that there was something about him that compelled me to try and find a way to get him off the street.  Maybe it was because my son's name is Alex and that they were the same age, maybe it was that he had a Spanish language bible that he actually read or that he just seemed like a nice kid that needed a break to get off the streets quickly, I don't know, but I wanted to help him.  Anyway, it led me to go to the Dream Center to try and get some help and on the way there I passed by 7th and Alvarado and witnessed a big gang street fight. This image of the street fight stayed in my mind for a week and after praying about what God would want me to do about it I felt led to go back down there and start prayer-walking in MacArthur Park which eventually led to me preaching with some other evangelists in the park.  Oh, and by the way, I did get a Spanish speaking contact for Alex and gave it to him the next week.  After that, I never saw him again.  So after telling these stories to them while we waited for the tire to inflate this man said that there was a free seminary that I might be interested to go to.  We exchanged phone numbers and names.  So guess what his name was??? Yeah, it was Alex!!!  Before we all drove our separate ways, I gathered his family around and I prayed for them.  It was special.  You know when I think about that whole sequence of events, how if it wasn't for Gary being there, I wouldn't have been there.  If I hadn't been there to supply the jack and the tire inflator, this man and his family would have been stuck there as the sun was going down with no Triple A and no way to replace the tire.  If I hadn't made a promise to Jason the week before that I would be there, I probably wouldn't have gone downtown because I was really tired and had to go to work early the next morning.  God is good. Turned out, Jason wasn't there and I haven't seen him since.

Yesterday's trip was somewhat uneventful.  I got down there just about the time the sun went down, so there wasn't a lot of daylight left.  I'm looking forward to March 13th and the start of daylight savings time.  I went straight to where Don and Kia lived about a month ago under the freeway by the Alameda exit. Neither of them are living there anymore, Dave was there, but he keeps to himself all the time and doesn't know the people living across the street from him.  I met a man name Sergio there and he told me that Don and Kia had moved on. I got to pray with him.  He thought Don was over by 6th and Towne now.  When I ended the night's trip I was at the parking lot at San Pedro and 9th.  This is where I ended up on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the new owners of the lot have kicked all the homeless folks out. But Sunday I saw Red and some of the others there one more time in an alley next to the parking lot.  I had heard that Shorty had gone to Detroit, but apparently, he's back.  Red says he's getting an SRO this week and should be off the streets for good in a couple of days.  He also told me that 3 of the folks living around there that I've known and helped have died. Mostly overdoses or mixtures of drugs and alcohol.  I had made a dozen sandwiches to take down Sunday. Of the dozen people who received them, its hard to know how desperate they were for food. I do know they all got eaten, so there had to be a few who wouldn't have eaten anything if I hadn't made the trip.

Well, those are the highlights from the last three weeks.  One more weekend before daylight savings time.  That will help out a lot.  It's hard to get up after 4 hours of sleep and get things ready to make a trip before the sun goes down.  I'll take all the help I can get with daylight savings time.  --Until next time.  John    
  
Alex changing the tire-with the second jack.He had taken his 'good' shirt off.

Gary on Venice St

Leticia and Antonio--Taken the same day as the others...I just like this photo of them