Maybe I've seen too many episodes of "The Closer" (although I don't think that's possible: best cop show on TV and when I saw the series finale, I felt like I was saying goodbye to some good friends), but whenever I see a body lying awkwardly in an alley I suspect the worst. Seeing large puddles of a reddish substance nearby just heightens the suspicion.
So when I spotted a body lying awkwardly in the alley across from The Lord's Rain, I took notice; and when I saw large reddish puddles near him, I got even more alarmed. The fellow was breathing, which was a relief, so I knelt down and touched his shoulder.
"Hey, bro'," I said. "You OK?" His eyes popped open. Bright blue eyes, under a close-cut crop of grey hair with a reasonably clear face.
"What?"
"Are you OK? Aside from lying face-down in an alley, let's say."
"Yeah. Yeah ... I'm just relaxed."
"Really? Heckuva place to be relaxing. Do you know where you are?"
He glanced around. "Yeah. What time you got?"
"10 to 8."
"OK. I just wanna be left alone."
"Hey, no problem. We got some coffee across the street, if you'd like some. Right where the sign says 'OPEN'."
I started away. One fellow walked past me down the alley and kept on going, barely looking at the man. A couple came over and the woman asked, "is he OK?" "Apparently," I replied.
Just then, an unmarked police car pulled up and two cops got out. "Are you the one who called us?" one of them asked. "No," I said. "Someone called us." "He says he's OK."
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| "Really: I'm fine ..." |
The other cop knelt down beside him and they chatted for a bit. The first policeman -- older than the other, with an English accent -- came over to me. "Can our friend come over for a cup of tea or coffee?" "Absolutely," I said.
But after chatting with the man and helping him to his feet, he headed away down the alley, and the two cops went back to their beat.
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For a brief period on Saturday, The Lord’s Rain looked like a convention of emergency personnel. A man had come in, ripped out of his mind on something, and promptly fell down. Danilo helped him to his feet and guided him to a bench beside the wall. No sooner had he sat down than he reeled and did a head-plant on the floor and lay there, unconscious.
John called 9-1-1. At the same time, another of the guys ran out and flagged down a passing police car. Two women constables came in, donned blue latex gloves and started trying to wake him up.
At first, they had no success, and then, just as firefighters arrived (first responders), he started to open his eyes. He had a nasty red-turning-to-purple bruise on one eye and dried blood around one ear – apparently acquired before he came in. The police managed to get him sitting upright with his back against a chair and the firefighters started looking him over.
“I don’t need to go to hospital,” he kept asserting, throwing in some verbal abuse as the firefighters got more adamant that he should, “just to get checked out”.
“Listen,” one of the cops said, “you may have a head injury and you should let them check you over to make sure there isn’t damage in there.”
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| Another photo that won't go viral: emergency personnel caring for someone. |
“There’s nothing in there!”
By now, the police sergeant in charge of that sector had arrived, along with the Ambulance Supervisor. The more they tried to convince him he should go to the hospital, the more he declared he was perfectly alright and didn’t need to go to the (EXPLETIVES DELETED) hospital.
The ambulance arrived. By now, we had about 10 uniforms inside, as if John had simply said "yes" when the 9-1-1 operator asked, “do you want police, fire or ambulance?”.
People, apparently, cannot be forced to go to the hospital if they don’t want to, no matter how convincing a case the emergency personnel make. Our friend suddenly got to his feet and stalked out of The Lord’s Rain, pausing to spit at the ambulance.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Danilo remarked after everyone had left. “When someone who’s on drugs sees people in uniforms, they get that rush of adrenalin and they immediately act like they’re sober.”
I ran into the police sergeant a short time later. They were able to track the fellow to a SRO hotel, where he’d barged into someone’s room and started breaking things. “We got him cleaned up and got him home,” he said.
Every time I read or hear about “activists” claiming police unfairly target people on the DTES or see some amateur video that purports to show “brutality”, I think of scenes like this one. There are plenty, but strangely enough, you won’t find anyone with a cell phone camera eager to post pictures of them. So I thought I’d tell you.
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In the presentation I’ve been working on to spread the word and solicit support for The Lord’s Rain, I mention that the whole building and success of the project has been an example of God “getting His ducks in a row” long before He even planted the idea of providing showers for people on the Downtown East Side in anybody’s head. Connections formed years, and in some cases, decades, earlier – such as The Oasis and Andrew Sheret – re-surfaced to make the facility come to pass.
Now, it’s happened again. One of the common needs of the people we serve is footwear. “Street foot” is a nasty affliction, and many times I’ve seen feet that were positively rotting from the effects of wet and unsanitary footwear. That’s why it’s so important to keep up our supply of socks, and why we welcome donations of shoes of all kinds and sizes when they come in.
Following the media attention we got in the past month, we were contacted by the owner of Quick Cobbler. The shoe repair business has a charity giving program, in which they take in used shoes, fix them up, and donate them to the needy. Would we like to be included in the program? Of course, we would. So, praise God and blessings to Ron Nijdam and his company, we will be receiving shipments of reusable shoes every couple of months.
So what’s this long-term connection? 29 years ago, your agent was working in radio in Victoria and was hired to do a TV commercial. I played a newscaster (a real stretch, to be sure), interviewing “the shoe on the street” to see how they prefer to be repaired. The shoes – English accent for a pair of Oxfords, “Valley Girl” for a pair of outrageous-looking runners, rough and tough guy for a pair of work boots – all agreed on the same repair shop. At the end, cut back to newscaster, declaring that this shop can handle any situation. Camera tilts down to reveal newscaster has three legs. Hilarious.
The client? Quick Cobbler. Ron was with the Victoria store at the time.
The commercial may have been lost over time (I’m asking around, because I'd love to get a copy), but there are at least half a dozen people who remember it. And now the connection re-surfaces. If you have any shoes that could still bless someone – with a bit of fixing-up – you can find more information at http://www.quickcobbler.com/
And of course, if you have any socks you can donate to the Vancouver Sock Exchange, let me know and I can come and pick them up.
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| new logo |
We like the fact that it has simple, quasi-corporate lines, while bringing together the Cross, an image of rainfall -- "latter rain," if you will -- and a very peace-inducing color scheme.
Justin receives an eclectic set of prizes: a homemade birdhouse (built by an uncle of Janet Klassen, the assistant pastor at Gospel Mission -- and overseer of The Lord's Rain), a gift certificate to Army & Navy, and a set of tickets to a Vancouver Canadians baseball game. Marylee Stephenson, proprietor of an online gallery called "Indian Art From The Edge" (www.indianartfromtheedge.com)
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| Janet presents the prizes to Justin |
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Amelia and I ran into an old friend from the Mission: Charlie. He’s an Eskimo (both he and another evangelist friend, Rob Gordon, call themselves “Eskimos”, rather than “Inuit”. Rob says “Inuit” refers to a specific group, while “Eskimo” is more encompassing) and Amelia has talked with him through many of his challenges. He’s tackled booze, marijuana, tobacco, and spends a lot of time just reading his Bible. "I been straight for months now," he said. "But you know what happens when you stay straight? You lose your friends."
"Those kind of friends, you don't need," Amelia said. "Besides, you make new ones," I added.
That can make it tough when one "cleans up". I remember Gilbert, the first street alcoholic I ministered to back in Victoria. He came to a series of healing services at the Victoria Miracle Centre and asked to be delivered from alcoholism. After four services, he declared himself clean, and in fact, stayed off the bottle and started to show how his life could be like without booze. But he wanted to see his friends, and couldn't resist going back to the downtown core to show them how clean he was. "They keep telling me, 'you'll be back,' and I tell them, 'no - I'm clean for good!'"
Human nature being what it is, one often finds that people in a bad situation tend to resent anyone who tries to break out of it. That seems to be particularly true with people who turn to Christ to find a new life: the world is right there, reminding them of what they used to be and how they got there.
And Gilbert did slip, winding up in the same sad milieu. I spoke to one of the ministers at a shelter/outreach in the city and told him how Gilbert's life had started to turn around after the prayers. "Yeah, I heard about that," he replied. "I didn't think it would last."
Thanks for the support.
Mind you, I wasn't much help, either. I was new to the Christian walk and didn't understand the importance of discipleship: being there for someone who's received the Lord and reinforcing their faith when it starts to flag.That's why I keep telling people that, while funding is an ongoing issue at The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission, the real need is for people. Jesus didn't say, "the fields are white for the harvest, but we need money to do it"; He said, "we need workers to bring the crop in"; making sure the trumpet of faith sounds louder than the white noise of doubt.
