Terry's Tale -- "I'm not a lucky man"

Today is Terry Hill's birthday, so it's fitting that this entry would be his story -- because 5 years ago, there may have been some question as to whether he'd even see this day. 
Terry Hill almost literally stumbled in The Lord's Rain in March of 2010. It turned out to be a pivotal moment in his life, and  ... let's let him tell the story ...

Hello my name is Terry Hill. I am a grateful follower of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I was not always a believer in fact I grew up as an atheist and was raised by atheists. I even married an atheist. Throughout my life I was pursued by God, although I didn’t know it.

           

            At an early age I was molested by one of our neighbors. It was tough because my parents didn't or wouldn't believe me. I ended up growing up on the streets here in Vancouver. I spent my youth running away from anybody and anyplace that I was put. When I was a teen I was locked up in a youth detention Center in Burnaby, BC I was locked up for being a run away. I was told I was unmanageable. While I spent those months locked up I learned how to really survive. I was going to make them pay for locking me up. I would give them a reason to lock me up.

            When I was released from the detention centre I was placed in a foster home. My foster parents were Christian. I thought my foster dad was a freak and kept this doubt that he loved me. He seemed to be too good to be true. His wife also really cared about me. They took me into their home and allowed me to be me they never pressured me into anything. They believed I was a good kid and they trusted that God would show himself to me. I ran from their house many times but they would phone and let the authorities know – not to pick me up, but to watch that I was okay. They knew that I would eventually come home on my own. Just like the prodigal son.  Which I did. But I still didn’t believe in God.

            I ended up being an Alcoholic. I was drinking to kill the emptiness inside me. I met my daughter’s mother at 22 and she and I drank and partied together. She was a prostitute when I had met here. I was fresh out of jail. She quit working the streets when she met me and I was trying to go straight. I wanted to go straight because she became pregnant with my daughter. I went into King Haven treatment centre in Abbottsford not to get sober but to get my back as my drinking caused a lot of problems. It worked for a few months but then I went back to drinking. She left me and took my daughter with her. She always allowed me to see my baby girl and after a while she met another man. I tried everything to get her back.

            When my daughter was about five years old my ex wanted to get out of a bad relationship and move back home to Saskatoon. She couldn’t go unless I allowed it. I guess this was one spot that God had touched my heart because I gave up everything and moved her and my daughter back to Saskatchewan.

While in Saskatchewan, I started working for a roofing company called “Little Rainbow". The motto was “SEALED FROM ABOVE”. Whoa boy my employers were born again Christians!

Rick and Veronica were two of the nicest people I ever met. Rick would always try talking to me about the Gospel and I would joke with him that as long as I didn’t convert I would have job security. I was working there when I met my wife at AA. She was an atheist and we got along. But I was never totally honest with her about my past. When my past caught up with me she left me. And if I hadn't slept with some other woman while we were separated, I might have gotten back with her but that is not what God had planned for me. I ended up running away from that working and drinking I moved away from Saskatchewan and lost track of my daughter.

            By the beginning of 2010, I was highly addicted to crack cocaine. I was no longer working was angry and was at the point in my life where I thought I was better off in jail or dead. I hated me and I hated what I became. On a cold rainy night in March 2010, I was broke, coming down and feeling like crap. I wanted to just rob someone so I could get more drugs. This became one of the greatest nights of my life. I started walking from White Rock towards Surrey looking for someone to rob. I ended up walking all the way to Vancouver that night through surrey New Westminster, Burnaby and Vancouver,

           

            There were numerous opportunities to rob people at the instant tellers along the way, but every time I got a chance a police car would drive by. So I didn’t do it, I wasn’t going to jail without getting high first. So I was sore, wet and angry by the time I got to triage shelter on this cold and rainy Saturday morning in March of 2010. They didn’t have a bed available and I wasn't a really nice guy. They escorted me out to the street. I was defeated – I was going to go to Hastings and Carrall and rip off a dealer I didn't care if I lived or died. I came to Carrall street and this blonde haired man standing in front of a building asked me how I was doing I don’t remember exactly what that conversation was but I remember him smiling and saying, “looks like you’re having a bad day, why don’t you go in and have a coffee?”

He asked me if there was anyone he could call for me but I said I burnt all my bridges there is no one. While sitting there Drew was talking to John at the counter talking about God and Jesus. Well I saw the shelter list and I was going to test their God. I picked up the shelter list and said you can call them and see if they have a bed. I already knew they didn’t.

            “Well,” Drew said to John, “let us pray before we call.”

I remember rolling my eyes into my forehead thinking what have I got myself into. Well, this was the first time I saw prayers answered, and I started to believe there must be a God, because this place had a bed for me.

I spent the next three days there at the shelter and never once wanted to use or drink. On the Monday I started to seriously want to quit drinking and drugging. I ended up going to Union Gospel Mission where I was helped by more Christians. They prayed for me and got me into a shelter out of the downtown core to wait for a bed in their recovery program.

That Wednesday, I came to the Carrall Street Mission and was still in AWE of God’s wonderful power and that evening in front of a small group of people in this room I asked Jesus into my heart as my personal Savior. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon me my knees went weak and I had such a feeling of Love and Joy that I had never felt before, I was given such a high that no drug could get me to.

I remember to this day that feeling and I would like to say that it’s been nothing but good times since then but it hasn’t: I’ve had many days that were horrible and I forgot about the love that Jesus has for me I spent the next few years struggling but I was searching for God’s love mostly in the wrong places I thought I could do things on my own, I have since put my trust in God.

I know now that everything that has happened has happened for the benefit of my good. For He has nothing but good for those that believe.

Today, I am 18 months clean and sober. I attend a Christian recovery group called Celebrate Recovery. I know that Jesus is in these rooms with us healing the broken and the hurt. I thank God for the day that I was so broken that I asked him to deliver me and so far he has been. I pray for all the people stuck in this lost and evil area of addiction and alcoholism that the Lord will bring them into his Grace as well.  I also thank God for my brother Drew and John who God used to soften my heart to actually hear his voice and feel his love. Since coming to Christ, He has brought my daughter back into my life after 16 years and I now have 4 grandsons that I have met and look forward to watching them grow up.

I am not a lucky man but I am truly Blessed by God.

Click here to hear Terry tell this story.

From The Lord's Rain: "Do you want fries with that?"

"What's the difference between the churches?"

Joseph was in a somber mood, which often happens when he's been drinking, which is often. This is one of a number of people named Joseph that I know through The Lord's Rain. There's old Joe Trepanier; Joe, our new volunteer who stepped up after his friend, Ken Franklin, passed away last November; there's Joseph, who declared a couple of years ago that we were surrounded by Higgs Bosons, because the HB is called the "God Particle" and we are all particles of God; and then there's this Joseph, who knows his Bible well and has the call of an Evangelist on his life -- and has absolutely no idea what to do with it. 

Joseph had come up to me in Pigeon Park, with a look of bewilderment on his face. He also had a fat lip, and it was hard to tell if he had been in a fight or had simply run into something.

“I need you to pray for my brothers and sisters,” he said. When he asks for prayer, it's usually for others first. The Apostle Paul tells us we need to pray for all the saints (Eph. 6:18). We did. 

“Look at my hands, Pastor,” he said. “Look how dirty they are.”

“Come on in and wash up,” I said. “You can warm up, too.”

Joseph usually "sleeps rough", and I'm guessing it's because he doesn't feel safe in the shelters. Many of the homeless people have told me that. One night, I asked Joseph where he was sleeping. "Blood Alley," he replied. "I've spilled enough blood there; might as well live there!" He then exploded with a laugh.

He spent about five minutes with his hands under the water, scrubbing. Eventually, they came clean enough for him, so we sat down and that's when he asked his question.

“What’s the difference between the churches?” he asked.

Even with a load on, Joseph can ask some very probing questions.

“Like,” he went on, “say you’re driving down the road and there’s a McDonald’s … and there’s nothing but McDonald’s all along the road. And what if you don’t like McDonald’s?”

I got where he was going. “But instead there’s Burger King and IHOP and DQ.”

“Exactly. So what’s the difference?”

“So long as they’re using the same basic food on the menu,” I said, “what does it matter?”

Joseph paused for a long time. He was either taking that one in or formulating his next sentence.

“I was an altar boy, you know? Way up north. And my mom used to get me to read. They’d ask for someone to read in church, and she’d push me up there: ‘Get up there and read!’ she’d say.”

“Well, something sure stuck with you,” I said.

Another long pause.

“I went into foster care,” he said.

“What was that like?” I asked, expecting to hear some kind of horror story.

“I was a baby,” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

“But I remember it,” he said. That may have said more about his situation than any words.

===

In the last email, I mentioned Jeremy and how we try to care for him. But there is this violent side that I rarely see, but still hear about. Bill Piggott, who's been part of the Mission since long before I got there, showed up for the Sunday service the week before last with a huge shiner over his left eye. It turned out that Bill had spotted Jeremy outside the Mission on the day after Welfare Day, trying to rob an older man. Bill -- who's about six inches taller than Jeremy -- stepped in.

"Come on, Jeremy," he said. "Not in front of the Mission."

(Why shaking down an older guy would be OK, so long as it was away from the Mission, Bill did not explain.)

He took Jeremy by the shoulders and walked him away, at which point another guy appeared on the scene, and hauled off and cold-cocked Bill, glasses and all.

Apparently, Bill did not return evil for evil, but it does remind one about maintaining that delicate balance between trying to see people as God sees them ... and being ready to duck.

===

An old friend, whom we met through The Lord's Rain, has re-surfaced. Terry came to us in 2010 -- totally used-up, depressed, and on the verge of "doing something I shouldn't". He had been out all night, looking for someone to rob to get another hit of crack cocaine, and had been turned down at every shelter he'd looked at -- including Triage, the last-resort/emergency shelter that will generally find you at least a comfy chair, if not a bed.

John Sharp and I had prayed over Terry, and then we called Triage. And they had a bed for him. He went up there and checked in. From there, he was able to get into recovery programs, and he was baptized at Gospel Mission. Since then, we've more or less lost touch over the past couple of years, but from what he told me yesterday, life now is considerably different -- and considerably better.

Terry has often pointed to that Saturday morning in 2010 at The Lord's Rain as his point of "breakthrough", but the rest of his testimony speaks to two vital truths: one is that the actual turnaround in life is a long, often painful, process; the other is that once God gets His hook in you, that hook is barbed, and nearly impossible to get out.

Terry will be sharing his testimony on Sunday at Gospel Mission. We will post that on YouTube next week.

How to turn the Tim's incident into something good

The media in Vancouver has been abuzz lately with news that the manager of a downtown Tim Horton's outlet dumped water all over a man who was sleeping on the sidewalk. The doughnut chain has apologized, the manager will likely be pilloried, and some are calling for a boycott of Tim's.

But maybe there's a way to make a more lasting benefit out of a nasty incident.

To begin with, having spent over 10 years dealing with people who "live rough" on the Downtown East Side, I know they can be pretty difficult at times. Chances are, things escalated to a point where the Tim's manager acted out of frustration. As is so often the case with social media, the climactic incident is all that gets reported: we don't see the build-up. Were the case to go through the "usual legal process", we might get a completely different picture.

Trust me: there have been some instances over the years, where people around the Mission have pushed my buttons.

This isn't to defend the way it was handled. Clearly, this fellow could use more face-to-face time with those who live rough.

So I have a modest proposal.

Rather than fire the manager or send him to sensitivity training (the western-democratic, PC equivalent of "re-education camps"), have him volunteer for one or two mornings a week at The Lord's Rain. That's the showers facility run by Gospel Mission Society (not Union Gospel) next to Pigeon Park. It's open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 6:30 until 9 AM or so. People can come in to have a shower or wash up and shave at the sinks; or just have a coffee and hang out.

It would be the ideal place for this manager to bring his talents -- serving customers -- and learn who these people really are. An old Anglican minister said to me many years ago, "You can never hate a man once you have talked to him." And so it can be here.

After all, what would punishment do, besides make the fellow defensive? He's already been pilloried in the media and his side of the story hasn't come out. And what would a boycott do, except assuage some people's sense of righteous indignation? It would fizzle after a while. And what would a cash donation to a charity do? That would be forgotten soon -- except for the tax receipt at the end of the year.

But think of it: the manager spends a couple of hours with us, then heads to work and has a completely different understanding of the people on the street. He passes that compassion on to the people he knows -- including his own staff -- and they start spreading it around. Maybe some of them start volunteering, themselves.

Talk about a Tim's "double-double"!

(If you want to know more about The Lord's Rain and volunteering, feel free to contact me.)