Everyone Has A Story

We gotta get outta this place

If it's the last thing we ever do

We gotta get outta this place

'Cause girl, there's a better life for me and you

Those words by that eminent Worship band, Eric Burdon and the Animals, have Biblical connections, whether wittingly or unwittingly. Throughout the Bible, we read about people whose lives moved forward when they moved on. Abram (as he was then called) was commanded by God to leave his home in Ur near what was later Babylon and go to a different and potentially hostile place. "Arise, Joseph," Gabriel told the carpenter, "take Mary and the Babe to Egypt and stay there until those who seek His life have died." The other Joseph, he of the coat of many colors, was forcibly removed from his comfortable place as Jacob's favorite son: sold to some passing merchants and later in Egypt traded for purple, incense, and a eunuch to be named later.*

I ran into Albert this past Sunday. With his slightly misshapen head and speech impediment caused by having no teeth, he could easily be written off as a "typical" Downtown East Sider, possibly with a lower-than-average IQ.

He's not. Trust me.

He used to be a regular at The Lord's Rain. Polite, kindly, unassuming; he would come in and shower and shave and hang about to chat with us. Then one day, he announced proudly that he had a new place and was moving in.

The new place is in a condo project at 1st Avenue and Main Street. 1st is a few blocks beyond what I would call the outside edge of the Downtown East Side, and as I understand it, the project got the goahead, in part, because of the "social housing" component. Albert has a small, self-contained studio apartment - and so we don't see him in the neighbourhood much anymore.

I was waiting for a bus to go to church and Albert was en route to First Baptist Church, where they lay on a big breakfast for the poor on Sundays (not sure if it's every Sunday or certain ones, like just before Welfare Wednesday). We chatted a bit about where we were going and what the breakfast was like, and then I asked him, "So how's the new place working out?"

"It's great," he said. "I got my own kitchen and bathroom and it's really clean."

I mentioned that another chap I knew also had a place in the same building but there had been problems with drug addicts and dealers.

"Maybe on his floor," Albert replied. "Our (electronic key) cards only get us onto our floor. Mine's great."

The other fellow had pointed out that the dealers had managed to disable some of the locking functions and were able to move about.

"I've complained [to the people in charge of screening the residents] about the situation," Albert went on, "but they tell us, 'addicts need a place to live, too'."

"So do you," I pointed out.

Albert gave a sort of "it is what it is" shrug, and, with my bus arriving, we said our goodbyes.

Probably the biggest advantage to Albert's place is that IT'S NOT ON THE DOWNTOWN EAST SIDE. Many of the people I meet there would like nothing better than to get the heck out of there. As I wrote on another occasion, Marty summed it up by saying it's too easy to fall back into drugs, when all it takes is a phone call and maybe a half-block walk from your front door. Why would we want to keep people in such proximity to the very things, both the physical presence and the spiritual reminders, of the current state they're in? Life's troubles are only temporary, but in that environment, the present seems so permanent.

The paradox is that there are so many dedicated services on the Downtown East Side for the mentally ill, addicted and chronically sick -- people whose personal stories include workplace injuries from which they've never recovered, diabetes or the effects of longterm alcohol use. Moving away can make those safety nets seem out of reach. But surely there's a way to make those nets mobile and give at least some of the people who need them a better chance at breathing free.

Some years ago at the old Rainbow Mission, I preached a message called "If you don't go -- you won't grow!" One fellow piped up, "What if the only place where you feel like you're accepted is the place you're in?"

He had me there, although from a pure "faith perspective", if God sends you to a place (and that's one of the keys to Abram's experience), then it doesn't matter if people in the area "accept" you or not. Scripture tells us that Abram/Abraham gradually earned the respect of the Canaanites. In this day and age, we're expected to be more accepting of people, so that question should be our problem -- not his. 

***

"You can never hate a man," an old Anglican priest once told me, "once you've talked to him." One of the keys to breaking down that artificial barrier around the DTES is to hear the stories of the people who live there. If you click here, you'll find Segment 1 of an exercise to that end. It's called, "In His image, too ...", and the first installment is the story of Kris Cronk. Over the months to come, you'll see more people who come into The Lord's Rain, telling their stories.

The trick, of course, is to get them to talk. I asked Maggie, a woman who's lived most of the last two years in a doorway on Cordova Street (she finally moved indoors this past week): "No," she said, "it's far too emotional." Ron and Gerald both said, "I'll get back to you." Richard, whose background includes residential schools, has only one word for that experience: "Unspeakable."

Then you get people like Marty. "Great idea," he said. "It'll help clear away some preconceived notions people have about this area." Exactly.

And Kris is eager to get others to do it. He found that, in telling his story -- which he has been doing for Megaphone Magazine -- he's managed to deal with the issues he grew up with and find a way to move forward. He also discovered a talent for writing that he never knew he had. So as more people tell their stories for the camera, I'll let you know when they're posted.

***

"They thought I was dead."

Mike re-surfaced this morning. He is one of many "Mike"s in the area, and the last time I saw him, he was dreadfully sick from alcohol abuse. He had been hoping to get into a recovery program, and part of our prayer that day was for that to happen. Clearly, he was sick of being sick. He was also terrified that he was past the point of no return and was going to die soon.

That was seven months ago. Today, he walked into The Lord's Rain: he was clear-eyed and quiet and one could sense he was different. He had managed to get into recovery, although I didn't ask what program. But apparently none of his friends in the area knew he had gone, so when they didn't see him for a while, they filed a Missing Person report.

"Shows they care about you," I said. "AND ... it shows you stuck with the program."

"Yep," he said. "I'm clean now. My color is back ... I was SO sick, man!"

I reminded him that he'd always have support with us. I hope he realizes that with us, and his friends he apparently didn't know he had, he's not alone in his struggle. Please keep Mike in prayer: he's won a key battle, but the enemy doesn't go away quietly.

***

*OK ... I made that part up ...

A lesson in sharing and caring

We had a "moment" this morning outside The Lord's Rain. Justin and I were standing outside the door, chatting, when a little boy and his daddy came up to us. The boy reached into a bag and pulled out a Hallowe'en treat for each of us.

And they walked on.

They had approached from Hastings Street, and it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. After a successful night of trick-or-treating, Daddy took the little one (he was maybe 5 or 6 - 7 at most) for a walk through the area where the poor people live. Not only did he see a world considerably different from the one he was growing up in, but it was a chance for him to share what had been given to him and get a glimpse of what it's like when you reach out to others with kindness and absolutely no expectation of anything in return.

Lord, bless that dad for doing that. I don't know his name -- God does -- and there were no cameras or anyone to publicize the event. It was a "just because" thing, sowing seeds not only with the child, but with the people he met on that walk. Who knows what fruit those seeds will produce in years to come?

Harold and Vicky; and good news for Maggie

Bart shook his head. “A man drink like you do,” he said, “he gone die!”

The Kid thought about that for a moment, then said, “When?”

-- from “Blazing Saddles”, 1974 (slightly novelized version)

“He’s been drinkin’ rub,” Sheila said, “and some o’ that!” she added, pointing to an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

I passed the information on to the ambulance dispatcher. It was Friday morning, and Bruce (who can be seen on our video presentation about The Lord’s Rain) had come into the ministry to get me to call 9-1-1. “Someone’s havin’ a seizure,” he said.

“Rub” is rubbing alcohol, which is usually watered-down or mixed with Listerine, but Sheila insisted that Ashley had been drinking his straight. Ashley was lying on one of the benches, twitching slightly on his left side. He was breathing normally, a fact confirmed when the dispatcher had me watch him and say “now” whenever he took a breath. But the ambulance was on its way and got there in a couple of minutes.

Before they got there, Ashley came to and managed to sit up. “I’m epileptic,” he told me, and a couple of the others said, “he’s OK – he doesn’t need an ambulance.” But Sheila laid down the law. “They need to check him out,” she declared.

It turned out that one of the paramedics knew the patient. “Have another seizure, Ashley?” Ashley nodded. “Want to go to the hospital and get checked out?” “Yeah, I wanna go,” Ashley replied. They walked him to the ambulance and helped him in. As we watched him, Sheila pointed with her foot to the bottle of Jack, almost in wonder at the amount Ashley had put away.

Again, I marvelled at the compassion shown by the paramedics. Not only did one of them know Ashley’s name, but also remembered that he had a broken collarbone, which had not been repaired – probably for the same reason Jim Ritchie hadn’t had surgery to repair his collarbone: too much risk that he would fall, break it again, and get infected.

On Saturday, I strolled over to Pigeon Park again, and there was Ashley, sitting on the same bench, slugging back something from a bottle. I asked him what happened at the hospital. He didn’t really know. “That was Thursday,” he said.

“Friday.”

“No – Thursday. I woke up at home this morning.”

 Nothing I could say would shift him from that belief. Apparently, he’d lost a day due to the stroke.

“Hey – I’m alive,” he said, smiling and taking a pull on a bottle of something dark and strong-looking.

A couple of the others at the park came over and chatted and one, whom I’d never seen before, said, “thank you for praying for us.”

What can one say, besides “you’re welcome”?

I’ve said before: The Lord’s Rain has been serving basic human needs beyond the need to be physically clean. People anywhere – especially in a place like the Downtown East Side – have a basic need to know that they’re in right standing with God. Being prayed for goes a long way to that end.

Anyone can do that, too – although it’s important to offer the prayers in the hope-against-hope that knowing how much God loves them will gradually provide greater comfort than rubbing alcohol, Jack Daniels and whatever Ashley had in that bottle.

===

The word “gradually” is important. My friend, Cal Weber, who leads Campus Ministry at the BCIT (BC Institute of Technology), once noted that water, flowing over a rock, has the same impact as a sledgehammer; it just takes longer. But when the job is done, the rock is completely worn away, without the big chunks a sledgehammer leaves behind. So it is with Ministry.

===

It is six weeks, now, since Vicky, one of our regulars, came into The Lord’s Rain. She bypassed the coffee line, looked at John, Danilo and me and burst into tears. “Harold died this morning,” she said.

Harold was her male companion (for want of a better term: they weren’t married, and “boyfriend” sounds trivial, especially under the circumstances), and she had woken up that morning to find he had passed away in the bed beside her.

On Friday, Vicky was back at The Lord’s Rain, still grieving, carrying with her the little leaflet from the memorial service. She poured her heart out to John, which was actually a good choice, as he had had a similar experience – waking up one morning to find his roommate dead on the kitchen floor – and he is known to people in the area as an excellent listener.

---

How about a little good news?

I have mentioned Maggie before, although I’ve only seen her in The Lord’s Rain once. A very small woman, somewhere between age 45 and 60, she gets around by pushing a wheelchair (although she recently got a walker, which is easier to handle). For the past couple of years, she’s had a little camp in a doorway on Cordova Street, just around the corner from The Lord’s Rain. Last year, the space was renovated into a restaurant and delicatessen, but the proprietors let Maggie stay in the doorway, which isn’t being used, anyway. A gate was installed and Maggie was given the key. Little by little, her camp has grown, with pillows, a sleeping bag and books, and people drop off food for her, or she goes out to find a meal from one of the outreaches.

On Friday, she called me over. “I’m moving into my new place in December,” she announced.

It turns out, she’s had a room at a single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel called the Marble Arch, which is just outside the DTES. “I’ve been payin’ rent there,” she said, “but I refused to go back until they fixed the place up. It was declared number-one-worst place in the city.”

But now, it appears, the renovations have been done. “I got new furniture and a kitchen with a microwave that works!” It appears that she’d been paying rent for her room at Marble Arch, which held it for her in the mean time. Disabled and ravaged by drug abuse (it’s hard to say which followed the other ) and occasionally subjected to verbal abuse, like the guy who yelled at her, “you brought it on yourself!”, as he blew her off, Maggie is about due for a break.

===

(Do you remember a song from the 1980s, called “The Way It Is,” by Bruce Hornsby and The Range? The opening verse describes a homeless guy begging on the street, and someone drives by in a car shouting, “get a job!” We all nodded sagely and opined how awful that was and how true and but it must be someone else who had such a stinking attitude. To borrow Walt Kelly’s overused line, we have met the enemy, and he is us.)

===

An article in today’s Vancouver Sun makes interesting reading. It’s on a national study that’s just been released on housing for the mentally ill, and suggests mentally ill people tend to “do better” living in self-contained apartments scattered around the city, rather than in SROs concentrated in a particular area. They benefit, the study suggests, from being around healthier people and socializing more. Interestingly, the NIMBY factor among people already living in these neighbourhoods is not as pervasive as some might have thought.

It reminds me of a remark our friend Marty made a few months ago. “It’s too easy [on the DTES]. I can call a dealer any time, then take two steps outside my door and meet him.” Others consider “getting the heck outta Dodge” to be a main goal in life. The important thing is to impart sufficient hope to them that they will, like Maggie, see that a breakthrough is not just desirable, it’s possible.

"You're Good People!"

I noticed the boy first. Clean-cut, good-looking, he politely, almost shyly, asked where he could hand in a pair of dirty socks and get a clean pair. He motioned towards the sign, “Vancouver Sock Exchange”.

I found a pair in one of our bins. They were clean, but didn’t match.

“That’s OK,” he said. “They’ll usually be covered by my shoes, anyway.”

“If anyone asks, tell them you’ve got another pair, just like them.” I’m such a wit.

Then I noticed the girl. Beautiful, and together, they could have been that quiet, sweet couple who got together in high school and never split up.

Danilo nudged me. “Teenagers?” he said. “Must be,” I replied.

They each had a large suitcase with a bedroll and spent their time organizing their things. I think they had showers. The boy told me later that they had spent the night at Triage, an emergency shelter. I’ve had very little dealings with Triage, but what I’ve seen is a kind, compassionate staff that goes above and beyond to try to give people a dry alternative to spending the night on the street. I remember carrying one drugged-out girl into the building and the staff arranging a couple of comfy chairs and finding a blanket for her because they had no beds available. The sense I get is that they will do anything in their power to keep from turning someone away.

“We need to get back to Alert Bay,” the boy said. “I came down here for treatment and now we’re waiting for Harbour Light to open to see if they can help us with the ticket back.” He went out around 9, and the girl stayed behind with the luggage. By 10 o’clock closing time, he hadn’t come back, so she got up to leave.

“You’ve probably noticed that you’ve stumbled into a church,” I said as we stepped outside the door. “Do you mind if I pray over you?”

“No. Please.”

It was brief: for protection, a safe trip home, health ... she smiled, “thanks. You guys are good people!”

I hope and pray that we don’t see them again.

The Lord’s Rain serves so many people in so many different ways: longtime residents of the Downtown East Side who find a community place where they can be themselves; people who see their stay on the DTES as a temporary stop while they get a foothold on life; people in need of a place to come when they are literally “just passing through”. I don’t know what the boy was getting treatment for, but if it was some kind of addiction, perhaps the experience of coming into The Lord’s Rain and meeting what his girlfriend called “good people”, can help provide the hope that fills the void.

+++

You Can Observe A Lot Just By Watching dep’t

Turnaround in one’s life doesn’t necessarily relate to financial or social circumstances. The first and most lasting sign of turnaround appears to be in one’s attitude, particularly when it comes to “owning” the issues and events in their lives. Simply put, those who own their issues, who admit that they messed up and bear responsibility for the setbacks (and I don’t mean saying, “I wrong to trust those people!”), are more likely to turn around. Those, whose problems are always the fault of someone else, are not. You see the effects of the attitudinal change in different ways, but the bottom line is, they’re a whole lot more pleasant to have around. It’s wonderful to watch.

+++

got jobs?

There are a couple of guys I know at the Mission who are in need of work. Due to age and certain infirmities, they’re somewhat limited in the amount they can lift and so forth, but they’re smart and, I believe, reliable. That’s the best recommendation I can give them, but I’m passing along a desire for some leads for them for part-time or casual work in the Vancouver area. If you think you can help, please reply to this email and I’ll help make the connection.

+++

Scripture

A verse in Jeremiah is one of many that sum up the importance, in God’s eyes, of serving the poor. The message is given to one of the sons of Josiah, king of Judah; the son has been solely concerned with the finery of being a prince. God tells him, through the prophet (Jer. 22:15),

“Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. (16) He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Was not this knowing Me?”

That really needs no further interpretation. 

InSite and a more positive response

This is a mea culpa, of sorts -- a repentance for allowing the Good News of Jesus Christ, which Gospel Mission has been promoting for nearly 85 years, to get clouded with a political matter.

The CBC is running a feature today on the tenth anniversary of InSite, the supervised drug-injection facility in Vancouver. Initially, it was located in 327 Carrall Street, on the ground floor of the building that has housed Gospel Mission since the 1940s. That same site is now The Lord's Rain; I would call that a case of God redeeming an entire building -- bravo for the ironies He sends us! 

A CBC reporter called us a couple of weeks ago, asking if she could interview one of the proponents of InSite at The Lord’s Rain -- going “back to where it all began”, as it were. But we turned her down, and in the process gave her an earful about our opposition to the facility and its concept. Certainly, we've made no secret of our feelings about the facility.

She called me yesterday, asking for our statement on the opposition to it. Barry, Janet and I had come up with an agreed-on message: that we see no good in InSite and that the money spent on the facility would have been better spent on recovery programs and detox facilities. That's the message I delivered to her.

But on reflection, I realize that I missed an opportunity to say not what we’re against, but what we are for. 

(I have to be careful here, lest I appear to be throwing Barry and Janet under the bus: I did help craft the message and none of us raised this point at the time; but, while I can't speak for them, I believe that, if any of us had raised it, we would have agreed on it.)

So for the record, what are we for?

•          We are for lives turning around
•          We are for second chances
•          We are for healing (not just reducing harm but eliminating it)
•          We are for hope
•          We are for Christ, because it’s in Him – and only Him – that all these things can be achieved.

Anything that doesn’t provide for that is in opposition.  (There’s no shortage of things to be against these days: Jesus gives us a focus on something to be for.)

There are many things that cannot be fixed quickly and can’t be fixed at all, using human strength, but with Jesus, anything is possible. Jesus is the one-size-fits-all solution because He is exactly what every one of us needs to address our unique situation. Whether it’s drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, bad decisions leading to bad situations; even a general emptiness in life – the feeling that something is missing – He is the only Way.

Our job is to promote that message: a positive message – not the negative one of what we’re against.

The Lord’s Rain has accomplished a lot because of that positive message and God’s Will for people to know His Son and be healed of all things.

And that's what we're for.

Janet's Victory

“What is this place?” the new woman asked.

“It’s The Lord’s Rain,” Janet explained. “We provide showers for people who need them; we also have coffee if you want some.”

“Hmm,” the new woman said. “Can I have a shower?”

“Sure!”

“Hold on: I’ll be right back.”

The new woman left, and Janet thought, “maybe she will – maybe she won’t,” and got on with the task of overseeing Ladies’ Day on Monday.

But the new woman did come back. “I gave her the soap and shampoo,” Janet said later, “and two towels, because she has long hair and I know what it’s like, having long hair.”

It is now a year since Janet Klassen stepped into the role of Assistant Pastor at Gospel Mission and overseer of The Lord’s Rain. The experience has been yet another “W” in a string of personal victories in her life, dealing with many of the same issues that afflict people on the Downtown East Side; applying her own experiences to helping others through theirs.

For the record, Janet can be found at 327/331 Carrall Street:

•          Monday mornings for Ladies’ Day at The Lord’s Rain
•          Monday evenings for Movie Night at Gospel Mission
•          Wednesday mornings for The Lord’s Rain
•          Wednesday night for the weekly prayer meeting at Gospel Mission (for which she bakes goodies for snack time)
•          Thursday morning at The Lord’s Rain
•          Every other Friday night to teach Bible Study at Gospel Mission
•          Sunday afternoon for the service at Gospel Mission
•          Sunday night for The Rock Church (which meets at Gospel Mission)

Hmm ... she doesn’t seem to have anything happening on Tuesdays or Saturdays. We’ll have to see about that.

Janet grew up in the church, beginning with an Anglican Church in Mission, where she was teaching Sunday school by age 15. “Our mother told us (she has two older sisters) that we each had to do something in the church,” she says. When her parents moved to a Full Gospel church, Janet stayed with the Anglican Church, as she wasn’t comfortable in a Pentecostal setting. But it was at the Full Gospel church that her parents met Barry Babcook, and Barry and Janet’s father wound up working together at Samaritan Inn, a recovery house for addicts. Janet met a young man at Samaritan Inn, and they started going together, coming into Vancouver for Sunday services at Gospel Mission, and that began the connection that remains to this day – 14 years later. In 2002, she started Movie Night, showing a Christian-themed movie – anything from blockbusters like “Jesus of Nazareth” or “The Passion of the Christ” to non-theatrical releases about the lives of the Apostles.

But all that time, Janet battled severe emotional issues. They landed her in Riverview Mental Institution for a year in 2000 and led to numerous hospital stays and suicide attempts over the years. It reached a point where her father took her to Barry and said, “Here – you do something with her.” That set Janet on the path that has led her to where she is now.

She is able to talk about it, because each attempt on her own life was headed off by a miraculous move of God. There was the Tylenol incident, for example.

“I was in a parking lot, and grabbed a handful of Tylenol and started gulping them down,” she says. “Just then, my psychiatrist came along, saw me, and hauled me away.” The parking lot was five blocks away from the shrink’s office and the doctor “just happened” to decide to go for a walk at that time.

Janet recalls, “I said to her, ‘what made you come here?’ ‘God,’ she said.”

On another occasion, Janet started to slip into an “episode” during one of our Bible studies at the Mission. She went into Barry’s office. Barry had recognized the signs and went in after her. He came out a moment later and said to me, “go find a cop. We need to get her committed and the police can do it right away.”

I went outside. The Downtown East Side is certainly not without police presence, but there are times when, as the old saying goes, you can’t find a cop when you need one. This was not one of those times. I took two steps away and ran into two officers who had just confiscated a Samurai sword from one of the drug dealers.

I explained the situation and the pair – a man and a woman – came upstairs. They went into Barry’s office to try to talk to her. Then the man came out and motioned to Barry and me to come into the kitchen. “I was a youth pastor,” he said, “and from my experience, I’d say this was possession.” Barry and I looked at each other: of all the cops to come into the Mission, we got the one that understood the situation.

The policeman went back into the office and talked to Janet in Christian terms, and a short time later, they led her out.

And then there was the Granville Bridge incident. Janet had been sent to Vancouver General Hospital in another episode, and actually climbed onto the railing at mid-span. She let go. But a policewoman was on the scene and grabbed her. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she said as she hauled Janet back.

“You will die when God says it’s time for you to die,” Barry told her later.

“I’ve learned that the big problem I’ve had,” Janet says, “is abandonment issues. If I think I’m being left alone, I freak. And you see, that’s what so many people on the Downtown East Side experience. They’ve been left alone, and we try to show them that they’re not alone.

“The Lord’s Rain is so different from Gospel Mission. You get fewer Christians coming in, for one thing: you get hard people from the Street, people from all walks of life who need help – not from preaching, but people who just need coffee and a hug and some love. In a way, they’re easier to reach than people at the Mission. People at the Mission have heard it all before. People at The Lord’s Rain are often surprised by the love.”

Teaching Bible study has been an eye-opener for Janet. “We’re currently studying James,” she says, “which has been a real challenge for us.” Her Bible studies are interactive – she works from resource materials from Max Lucado’s Ministry and invites questions and comments all through the teaching. About 15 people come to the lessons.

“[The questions] are very intelligent: We were talking about ‘taming the tongue’ (James 3:1-10), and Marty said, ‘what about when you don’t say something that you should?’ So that got me thinking and now I’m challenged to speak up when I might not otherwise. Jesus spoke up when He was on the earth: I need to do the same.” She reflected, and added, “They teach me more than I teach them.”

Janet has been the one to “get through” to some people that others cannot. Gary, for example, spends much of his time mumbling to himself and when he does reach out into the world of the Rest Of Us, the sentences are disjointed and filled with images of violence, mob hits and conspiracies. Somehow, Janet is the one person who is able to communicate with Gary. In the same way, she was close to Barry Smith, whom I wrote about last year when he passed away, and was listed as “next of kin” on the hospital documents.

Much of her own victory – she hasn’t been in hospital since last November – has come as she’s moved into her role as Assistant Pastor and taken on the management of The Lord’s Rain. “Taking on more responsibility and thinking of others rather than myself has been the best thing,” she says. The confidence and self-assuredness she’s gained is propelling her towards a new chapter, training -- through the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority -- as a Peer Support Worker. That training, plus the dedication, love and light of Christ she carries wherever she goes, will bless more and more people in ways we could never imagine.

The Apostle Paul writes (2 Corinthians 2:14) “Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”

Yep – that’d be Janet, alright.

School Days, the Fear Factor and How God Took Over 327 Carrall

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Marty, a former schoolteacher who essentially "lost it all" to drugs and booze and has been battling his way back. He has not been able to regain his standing as a public school teacher, but he decided recently to train to teach English as a Second Language and made a marvellous arrangement, in which the housing society that oversees his apartment will front him the tuition cost.

The funding has now come through, and Marty is about to start his course, the first part of which is offered online through the University of Victoria. Over the past couple of days, Marty's talked about re-connecting with the discipline required to take the course -- especially when it's online, with no one hanging over your shoulder, hectoring you on -- and the fear.

"Drugs take away everything," Marty said today. "I mean everything -- including any shred of self-confidence. I've been clean for seven months now, but I still have these fears. Can I do it? Will I be up for the job?" He talked of a 12-step program he'd been on, and how "courage" was one of the key points. "Courage doesn't mean being fearless," he said, "it means facing your fears and dealing with them.

"When I messed-up with drugs and I had to meet the Superintendent (of schools), my (AA) sponsor went with me and we sat outside in his car and prayed about it. I went in, all prepared to get fired -- and walked out with substitute hours! Totally not what I expected! Then we went to my bank manager, because I'd been kiting cheques. Again, we said a prayer in the car and I walked in there -- I figured he was going to call the cops and I was prepared to go to jail. Instead, he gave me a $20-a-month repayment plan."

In the Bible, fear, I pointed out, also precedes a move of God. Anytime something really big is about to happen -- a voice from a burning bush, for example, or the announcement of the birth of the Messiah -- the humans who see it have to be told, "fear not". 

Marty has a lot of support in his corner as he seizes yet another second chance. He knows it. And it's starting to sound like he's believing in himself again, too.

===

Herbie is also about to answer the bell -- the school bell, that is -- and his fear is manifesting in a slightly different way. If you've seen the video presentation about The Lord's Rain, you'll see Herbie in the clips of the Volunteers. He's identified as Robert Lowe, which is his real name, but became known as "Herbie" when he jokingly used that name on a snooker scoresheet. Bad knees kiboshed his career as a plumber, leading to his arrival on the Downtown East Side, but he's pitched in on occasion, when something has gone awry with the plumbing around The Lord's Rain. About a year and a half ago, having gone from served to serving at The Lord's Rain, he determined to go into social work. He set about getting his high school diploma (he was a few credits short of graduation), then started applying for funding to take courses at Douglas College. The college accepted him, the funding came through, and he started last week.

His big fear was getting to the campus. His courses are located at the campus in Coquitlam, 20 miles from the Downtown East Side. He plans to move out there, but for the time-being, he's had to rely on public transit, which takes about an hour and 10 minutes by bus. So along with his preparations, he started in July, diligently studying the bus schedules (the TransLink website is wonderful for that) to determine what time the bus comes by Hastings and Carrall so he could get to the college by 8AM.

The guy is seriously pumped about going back to school and helping others.

He even dyed his hair.

===

There's a common factor to Herbie's and Marty's current experiences: the knowledge that God has given them another Second Chance. They're grabbing it and working it for all it's worth. Would that more of us their age could combine life experience, Herbie's and Marty's determination, and even a soupçon of the exuberance of today's Generation N (N-titled): truly, as GB Shaw said, youth is wasted on the young.

===

On the DTES, youth is just plain wasted. A new group of people has been arriving over the summer -- many of them, as I've said before, young girls newly arrived from someplace else, having been convinced their parents were "stifling them" and that the Big City would have much more opportunity for her.

And if you believe that, I have some watches you might want to see ...

Today, a new one turned up. I had been talking with Marty and turned around in time to see this stunningly beautiful, impeccably-dressed brunette pick up a coffee and start to leave. She was accompanied by a young man. He was the sort of chap that, if my daughter were to bring him home, I would go out and buy an assortment of guns, just to be able to spread them on the kitchen table and clean them elaborately, all the while telling the young man how much I loved my daughter and would be REALLY upset if she ever got hurt.

I digress.

"Too hot for down here," Justin -- a new volunteer -- remarked as they left.

Danilo laughed. "You both reacted - him [Justin] like a young man ... and you like a human." (I think he met "humanitarian" or "humane": sometimes, Danilo's English can be inadvertently comical.) There are myriad things one wants to do when seeing someone new on the scene, knowing what the "scene" does to young, vital, beautiful people in a very few years: you want to scream at her, show before-and-after pictures, hogtie her and throw her into a darkened van and rush her back home; but all one really can do is pray. Maybe even now, her dad is heading down to the area, to bring her home and work through whatever made her want to run away.

Danilo has seen more than a few before-and-after scenarios. "You know Maggie?" he said, referring to a prematurely aged woman who hobbles around, pushing a wheelchair and lives in a doorway on Cordova Street. "I remember she was like that [girl] -- pretty. Now look at her." 

(Maggie's Place is a disused doorway in a new restaurant at the corner of Cordova and Carrall. Unlike Pidgin, just across Carrall Street, it and another new, higher-end restaurant in the same building, have escaped the calumny and constant protesting of the DTES activists.)

As always, we need to lift up girls like this one -- and young men like the one she was in -- in prayer. Intercessory prayer can do great things when physical actions fall flat; and distance means nothing.

===

Bravo for Life's Ironies Dep't. -- 'You wanna know how drugs can wreck someone?" Marty asked me. "There's a guy I know. He was messed-up on crack, managed to beat the habit, get a job and move into a better apartment. And the place he moved into, has a strict no-drugs policy. But as he got more money, he started having 'friends' over - and they'd get high. So he got evicted and he's back on the street." 

I've also seen the gradual destruction of one of the most promising people I've ever met: Mike, who was part of an award-winning school choir, but whose life gradually spun downwards because of drugs. Articulate to the point of getting hung up in his own vocabulary while trying to make a point, he would often be the only one -- aside from Amelia and me -- singing during Praise and Worship at Gospel Mission. But much of the time when I see him now, he's spaced-out on drugs; compounding the tragedy is his unwavering support for InSite -- the supervised drug-injection facility on the Downtown East Side. Occasionally, he's worn a T-shirt with the legend, "InSite Saves Lives" -- an Orwellian lie if ever I've heard one: the people who use the facility are already dead -- their lives surrendered to drugs; any hope that would spur them to recover, stripped away by a society that has tacitly told them that they will always be drug addicts so we might as well make it "safe" to use them. It was also Mike who told me that, by not taking part in the mob scene at the courthouse a couple of years ago, to intimidate a judge to rule that InSite was a "necessary health service" and hence had to receive federal funding, he missed out on $35.00.

I bring this up not simply to rant again about my passionate opposition to InSite and the concept of "harm reduction": as a Christian, I know that Jesus is about harm elimination and healing -- not keeping people enslaved to addiction. But there's a connection between The Lord's Rain and InSite that we don't often talk about.

From its beginnings as a Klondike-era saloon, our little space at 327 Carrall Street has seen some dark times -- probably none darker than its brief stint, 10 years ago, as a supervised drug injection site -- the forerunner of InSite.

Perversely -- but almost predictably -- Canada's public broadcaster is preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the "safe" injection site, and this week, a CBC Radio reporter called to ask if she could interview one of the proponents of InSite at The Lord's Rain, "to get an idea of what the place looked like."

I explained to her that The Lord's Rain looks nothing like it did during the injection-site days, nor in the time that followed until we took it over. I'm afraid the poor woman got quite an earful from both Barry and me -- Barry is even more passionate about this topic than I am -- and frankly, the metamorphosis of 327 Carrall would be a story, in and of itself. But I don't think that's her assignment.

The fact is, between the illegal shooting gallery and the "anti-poverty" (anarchist) groups which occupied the place, 327 Carrall has seen some pretty dark scenes. Barry constantly prayed for Godliness to come over the space and its tenants, and in bringing The Lord's Rain to pass, God has certainly answered that prayer. From being a focal point for despair, rebellion and lawlessness, that space has become a reflection of light and love and a source of hope in Christ. Like anything that has gone through repentance and renewal, the occupation by the supervised injection site might as well have never happened.

Volunteer at The Lord's Rain

The Lord's Rain -- the street-level outreach at Gospel Mission, which provides showers for people on the Downtown East Side -- has a number of opportunities for volunteers. These provide a unique chance to interact with people who have been essentially "written-off" by society and truly need hope and a hand-up, rather than a hand-out.

The volunteer positions are in early mornings -- between 7 and 8:30 am -- on Mondays (women only), Thursdays and Fridays. Duties involve:

• making and serving coffee
• handing out towels, soap, etc.
• finding clothing or shoes when asked
• cleaning up

But most importantly, these volunteer positions involve interacting: listening to people and encouraging them. Just knowing that someone from "the outside" cares about them can give someone hope to carry on, and hope is probably the most precious commodity on the DTES.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Janet Klassen, Assistant Pastor (and responsible for The Lord's Rain) at janet@gospelmission.net. 

Another volunteer position involves driving: we need someone to pick up the end-of-day product donation every Monday at 7pm from Cobs Bread in Caulfeild Village in West Vancouver. It requires a car -- a small hatchback will do -- and the ability to lift and load the bags. Once the product has been picked up, it needs to be delivered to The Lord's Rain -- either that same night or the following morning. 

If you are interested in this volunteer position, please contact me at drewdsnider@gmail.com.

You can find out more about the story of The Lord's Rain in this video presentation.

Junior - and the joy of giving

Frankly, I'm getting sick of writing obits for members of my "family".

In the past year, we've lost Barry Smith and Tina, and many others have come and gone over the years. "Let us learn to show our regard for a man while he is alive and not wait until after he's dead," Meyer Wolfsheim, a character in The Great Gatsby, said, so in that spirit and noting that Junior's time is short, I'd like to spend a few words on him while he's still around to contradict or embellish.

Junior comes across as a rough-hewn Cockney git, and when I first met him, he constantly sported a red ballcap with the flag of England on the back. He loved to talk about his rough past, with dark allusions to underworld connections. 

A few years ago, I let him make an "important" phone call. The call evidently went to voice mail.

"Junior. Later." And he hung up.

That more or less summed up the Junior Mystique: was he calling some gang connection? Setting up a rendez-vous? Calling a non-existent number and making us think he was doing some big business deal that dared not speak its name? 

A few weeks later, someone came into The Lord's Rain when Junior was there. "Don't I know you?" he said. "I don't know you," Junior replied. "Weren't we in Maple Ridge?" the stranger persisted, referring to the provincial jail. "I don't know you," Junior repeated.

Junior turned his attention back to telling whatever joke or anecdote he was telling me, and the stranger kept hanging around.

"I wanna ask you something," the stranger said at length.

"What?"

"Come out here with me."

"Not a good idea," I mumbled towards Junior.

"I ain't goin' nowhere," Junior said to both of us.

"No - come out. I just want to ask you something."

Junior ignored him. The stranger still hung around. I was distracted by something else and when I looked back, both of them were gone. Suddenly, Brad -- a former volunteer -- rushed in. "Drew! Get out here!" We went out and there Junior was, sitting in the alley with his back against the brick wall, bleeding from the side of his head. Junior wasn't into talking at the time, but Brad saw it and said he'd been brought down with a single sucker-punch. I called 9-1-1 for an ambulance. Junior was remarkably cooperative as they helped him in, as if the hospital would be his witness-protection program for the time-being.

When Cheryl Weber came to do a feature on The Lord's Rain in 2009, Junior suddenly stood up and recited the Pater Noster -- the Lord's Prayer in Latin, in its entirety. Cheryl's photographer shot it, although none of the footage was used.

His real name is Eric. One day, I asked him the obvious question. "How did you come to be called 'Junior'?"

The story that followed was one of those ones that was so off-the-wall, it had to be true. It turns out, he was born in India in 1948 to a 70-something member of the British Raj. Dad -- who I believe was Eric Senior -- moved back to England and left the lad in the care of his sisters in India. He eventually found his way to England, some time in a public school (what we refer to as "private" schools in Canada) and running with gangs and criminals and tough guys around Nova Scotia and Quebec on a motorcycle. Names like "Mom" Boucher, the notorious Hell's Angels kingpin, would roll off his tongue like an informant out of the back of a darkened van. Whether his talk was bigger than the reality, slightly embellished or absolutely 100% true, we may never know.

At the end of the day, Junior has been a loner. I've never known him to associate with anybody, and in many ways, a 10-minute visit to The Lord's Rain -- maybe to get coffee, maybe not -- seems to be the closest he comes to social interaction. The tales of underworld connections, while they may make some of us say, "yeah - right ...", may be Junior's way of isolating himself from the world. I still don't know why he got punched in the head.

Almost a year ago, now, Junior showed up at The Lord's Rain. The ballcap had been replaced by a large white cowboy hat. "I got cancer," he told me, matter-of-factly. "The docs say I won't see Christmas." I prayed over him for healing and peace.

The "docs" have missed the mark by several months. He comes in from time to time, by now, wearing an expensive black leather jacket.cowboy boots and a very impressive-looking watch; he also walks slowly, with a cane, and he wears sunglasses. He has grown progressively gaunt and pale in the past few months.

Yet there's still a bit of the swagger to him, and, almost to keep his own spirits up, he invariably has a joke. "Have you ever heard of an African elephant?" "Yes." "This over-sexed African elephant mated with a rhinoceros. You know what you call the offspring?" I shook my head.

"'ell-if-I-know."

(Believe it or not, I just now got it. You have to say it over a few times, I guess.)

And off he went. I figured this might be my last chance for a picture and this might be the most appropriate: a lonely figure, leaving me trying to figure out a joke as enigmatic as the man himself.

===

Maybe there's a bit of the latent bureaucrat in me -- and considering I couldn't organize a sock drawer, that could draw some guffaws from people who know me -- but when a new donation of clothing arrives at The Lord's Rain, I prefer to take some time sorting it and making sure we know what's in it. It could be that I've seen too many occasions where people have descended on a pile of donations like a pack of Tasmanian Devils on fresh carrion.

So when my friend Gloria arrived recently with a sackful of clothes her teenage sons had gathered -- along with a large garbage bag filled with new socks -- I naturally told John that we'd take some time to sort them before we'd give them out.

But then I went upstairs, and John, being the impetuous sort that he is, opened the bags and let the guys have at it. 

OK, so I didn't get to do things in an orderly fashion: but the guys were remarkably restrained and clearly delighted with the new shirts that had come in. And then I looked over at Gloria. There's a reason why she's nicknamed "Glow" -- she has this million-watt smile that could sell asphalt toothpaste and copper-wire dental floss, and she was totally ecstatic to see the pleasure people were getting. 

It proves a point we've often made here: you think you're ministering to people at The Lord's Rain; it turns out, it's the other way around.