But what time? We began with Friday nights; that had limited success, partly because not many people want to shower-up at 7:00 in the evening and partly because another Lord's Rain opening started up earlier in the afternoon. So we kept trying new times, and it's always been difficult getting people to volunteer for an early-morning opening. Ladies' Day, therefore, became something of a moving target as we tried to find the right formula.
Then, this past spring, with Ladies' Day sitting in the Tuesday 9-Noon slot, our friend Randall pointed out that one reason why it was no more successful there was because people were lining up for lunches at some of the other agencies around the Downtown East Side -- and when it came to the choice between a shower and lunch, you can understand which won out. At that point, Janet declared that she was willing to give an early morning a shot and so, we moved Ladies' Day yet again to 7-10am on Mondays.
Monday, we got some evidence that we've hit the "sweet spot". With Janet away on vacation, I went down to open up. Sandy, whom I've known since the Rainbow Mission days in 2004-2006, came to help out, as did Megan, a new volunteer, who lives at the Rainier Hotel, a few doors away on Carrall Street. It's a single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel, which caters primarily to women. Diane Brown, who works on Wednesday mornings, had met Megan a couple of weeks ago and invited her to come in: Megan asked if she could volunteer.
Megan seems like someone with a wellspring of gifts and ideas, who has -- for one reason or another -- never had a chance to give them an outlet. Drugs, mental illness, abusive past, you name it: anything can keep a lid on someone's self-esteem and make them keep their gifts to themselves and all have played a role in Megan's life. We'll get to know her more in the days to come. But one thing is certain: she's enthusiastic about bringing something to the Mission.
One of those is in "talking up" The Lord's Rain. She's been making little flyers to hand out at some of the social service agencies and telling the women in The Rainier about The Lord's Rain and Ladies' Day in particular. Already, it's starting to bear fruit.
This morning, a woman I hadn't seen before came in, using a walker. Ethel is native, 63, and in a lot of pain from the effects of arthritis and diabetes. She's also trying to kick a drug habit. "One of the women at the Rainier sent me over," she said. That would be Megan. Ethel was going for an interview to get into Ellendale, a recovery program in Surrey -- the kind where you allow yourself to be locked away for six months. But she was hungry, needed coffee, and needed to rest her feet.
One of the "meaning to get" things on my list has been a proper footbath, but I managed to rustle up a plastic bin and some foaming bath gel and ran warm water into it. Ethel plunged her gnarled, callused feet into the suds and the relief that came over her face was indescribable.
(The Health Contact Centre, which closed last year when a private not-for-profit agency took over some of its services, was noted for its footbaths, and people on the DTES haven't been able to find such a thing since; at the time, it was noted that the word "contact" was very important in the title: a vital face-to-face connection that you don't get in mainstream health clinics.)
"This is truly a house of the Lord!" she exclaimed. "I can feel His presence here!" Sandy and I prayed over Ethel for her to have favor in the interview and healing for all things, known and unknown.
Then Megan came in, followed by another woman. Kathy is her name, and she had been divorced from her first husband, then widowed by her second, who was a Pentecostal pastor. Now here she was on the Downtown East Side. There's a story there, and eventually, I imagine we'll hear about it.
"Let's pray for Ethel that she gets in at Ellendale!" Megan said.
"We already did pray for her," I said, and immediately heard the Lord say, "Fool! Don't stop her from praying!"
By some miracle, I managed to recover and encourage her to pray before any discouragement set in, and Megan prayed a lovely, heartfelt prayer for Ethel.
"Let's sing," Ethel said. "'This is the day (this is the day)/That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made)/Let us rejoice (let us rejoice)/And be glad in it ....' "
And then they launched into "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee".
And so we drank coffee and ate Cobs Bread buns and talked of everything and nothing and by the time closing time came around, none of us wanted to leave. But the office was calling and Ethel did have to get up to the health clinic. We'll probably hear soon how things went. And there's a definite sense that Ladies' Day took a big step closer to the way it was envisaged from the start.
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Sock update -- about a year ago, I whimsically made reference to the Vancouver Sock Exchange, with people bringing in used but still wearable socks and swapping them for new ones. On Saturday, Ron, one of our regulars who's a "binner" (makes additional cash by collecting recyclables from garbage bins and taking them to bottle-collection depots and scrap dealers), came in with a large bag of dirty socks. He's been regularly receiving new socks from us, which is understandable, given the need for fresh socks in his line of work. Now, I'm happy to say that he's one of the first who's actually traded in the used ones. "I got another bag of them at home," he told me. Now, that's "giving back"!
When we first started The Lord's Rain, "street foot", a ghastly rot that takes over a person's feet when they go too long in the same dirty socks -- especially if those socks get wet -- was very common. I realized recently that I haven't seen a case of street foot in a long time. I think the awareness of the need for fresh socks -- and people's willingness to meet that need -- has had a lot to do with it.
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