A special appeal from The Lord's Rain

The following is a letter I've just sent to the Friends of The Lord's Rain -- people who have supported the facility over the years with money, labour, resources and prayer.

Dear Friends of The Lord's Rain,

Today -- December 15 -- is kind of an important date for Gospel Mission. It's the ninth anniversary of the day Amelia and I met Greg Bromley, the owner of 325/327/331 Carrall Street to pick up the keys for 327 -- the eventual site of The Lord's Rain.

Many of you know the story -- that this was just one of a series of steps of faith that were taken up to that day and after. They led to the building of a facility that was initially intended to provide showers to the "street people" of Vancouver's Downtown East Side, but has really become a gathering place, a source of hope, a "real life" ministry and a beacon of hope in a hope-challenged area.

It has been what our late brother and longtime director of Gospel Mission, Barry Babcook, called "Jesus with the skin on".

Over the years (with a couple of exceptions), I have avoided making an overt appeal for money. I have sent you stories and vignettes of the scene, mainly the people we've met, befriended and served, so that you can see how your contributions are having a positive impact.

This is not one of those times.

I mentioned in my last email (a couple of months ago) that The Lord's Rain and Gospel Mission had to be closed due to structural damage done by demolition work next door. The Mission has since re-opened, but The Lord's Rain is staying closed for the time-neing. Some issues have been identified, which need to be addressed before we can resume letting people in to take showers or wash up.

Simply put, the place needs to be upgraded  to ensure it still complies with regulations.

This work requires funding, so I am reaching out to ask if you would consider making a donation.

Over the years, we have been blessed to receive big-ticket donations from various foundations and organizations; but it's been contributions of any size, given by people who donate what they can, that have imbued a spirit of "communal caring" to the place. The people we serve had picked up on that, although they may not have described it in as many words. It is, without a doubt, what makes The Lord's Rain special.

So if you can make a tax-deductible contribution, please visit the Gospel Mission website: http://www.gospelmissionsociety.com/.

If you can contribute time or labour, please contact the Director and lead pastor, Wesley Chadwick, at wezchadwick@gmail.com.

To my friends in the media: you have played a huge role in the progress of The Lord's Rain. I hope you'll consider giving this situation some publicity. You can contact Wesley regarding the current situation or contact me for background.

On behalf of the folks at Gospel Mission and The Lord's Rain -- the servers and the served -- Amelia and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed and prosperous New Year!

The Lord's Rain - a triple-entendre? (First written June 18, 2014)

“It finally hit me, what The Lord’s Rain means,” Ken said on Saturday. 

Ken is 60-something and still works as part of the crew that cleans the streets and alleys of Hastings Central. The crew is hired by The Bottle Depot, giving people in the area an opportunity to earn some income – and keep the place reasonably free of trash and needles. Ken is also a fairly quiet, level-headed guy, who was the first to speak up when we announced, a couple of years ago, that we had to limit the number of buns we could give out per person. Taking the attitude of one who was Speaking For The Group, Ken said, “Hey – we understand, and we’re just grateful for this.”

“What does it mean?” I asked him.

“I was in here the other day, and I suddenly felt this ‘tingling’ all over me. I hadn’t felt that since I first got saved, and suddenly I realized – ‘The Lord’s Rain’!”

In other words, His Spirit, pouring out on us.

How about that? A triple-entendre! The name was initially coined by Judy Babcook, Barry’s wife. She handed me a slip of paper at the Gospel Mission Christmas dinner in 2007, when the facility was barely under construction. “How about ‘The Lord’s Rain’?” it read. “Oh, very cute,” I said to myself, rather indulgently. “A nice play on ‘reign’ and ‘showers’. It will do as a ‘working title’, until we can think of something better.”

Good one, Drew! Judy’s name stuck, and CTV reporter Peter Grainger picked up on it when he did a report on the project. “It’s like a baptism, isn’t it?” he asked during an interview.

We certainly have the Holy Spirit sitting over our little Mission, but the smell coming from Pigeon Park was anything but holy. Ken had been the first to report it, and then Jeet came in and told us about it. Someone, they said, had pried the lid off a sewer manhole cover and was digging in the muck. Ken figured they were trying to find bits of rock cocaine to smoke. “That’s what happens when you get addicted,” Danilo pointed out. “Nothing else matters – not food, not being clean – all you can think of is getting more drugs, more drugs, more drugs!”

“Not that they ever find anything,” Ken said, “but you never know, right?” He laughed.

Truly, that was one of my first lasting images of the area around Gospel Mission: people practically bent double, searching the street for what might be a little white piece of rock, but more often than not, was guano.

I went outside to have a look. I couldn’t see if a manhole cover had been disturbed, but there was a fellow, sitting amid a pile of muck with an overturned bin beside him, picking through it with his bare hands. The muck contained dozens of discarded hypodermic needles.

I went back in and called the police non-emergency line. I told them what I saw and that I’d heard a sewer had been accessed. The call-taker gave me the number for the needle-exchange service so I called them and left a message. Then I went out to see if I could find where the manhole cover had been pulled off, and I had another look at the fellow in the muck. He resembled nothing so much as those images you see of children in a Third World country, playing on piles of garbage.

I called the police again. “I think we may have a mental health issue here,” I said. I’m sure the call-taker had to resist the temptation to say, “What was your first clue, Sherlock?” Instead, she pointed out that police were already en route. I looked out the window and saw the black unmarked cruiser parked across the street. One of the officers was chatting with the guy from the pile and his partner was standing guard. After a while, the guy walked away, and I went over to the cops.

“We assessed him,” one said. “He doesn’t appear to be a danger to himself or others, so we had to let him go.” He anticipated my next point. “I know: digging with your bare hands in a pile of sewage with needles doesn’t sound like a sane person,” he said with a tinge of irony, “but we’d need more to hold him.” 

Sad.

***

Police have identified a suspect in the breakin and attempted theft at The Lord’s Rain in late May. The investigating officer told me the chap’s name (which, my newsroom background reminds me, I can’t mention until he’s actually charged) but I don’t recognize it. I’ve asked police if some of us from the Mission can meet with him after the judicial system has done its thing – could be an opportunity to turn a negative situation into a positive one; certainly we would like to tell him we forgive him.

From The Lord's Rain: ch-ch-changes!

We are approaching a huge milestone at The Lord’s Rain: shower #10,000!

It is now eight years since I came back to Vancouver from New York, absolutely buzzing at the way God had led me on this two-week train trip, which included planting the germ of an idea to set up showers for people on the Downtown East Side. It’s obvious now, looking back at the way the project unfolded over the next seven months (it opened in April, 2008), that the idea had been around for long before I ever heard about it – long before I was born, in fact – and the Lord was just pulling the elements together, bringing it to fruition exactly in His way and in His time.

One of the intriguing things about the project – something worth remembering if the Lord puts something on your heart that appears to be too expensive or too big or beyond your personal abilities – is that the resources we needed were already there, lined-up years in advance, in some cases. It’s like the Israelites, building the tabernacle in the wilderness. God specifies some very elaborate and expensive elements for the building – gold and silver and fine linen and jewels – and one might wonder where they came from. But those resources were obtained from the Egyptians in the time leading up to their escape from Egypt: God instructs the Israelites to “ask of their neighbours gold and silver and precious stones”. He just didn’t tell them why those resources would be required later.

And so it was with The Lord’s Rain: connections made years before came together to make it happen.

Many of you probably aren’t aware of this, but Amelia and I moved to East Sooke, on Vancouver Island, about a year ago. It was a decision that was taken with a lot of prayer: in fact, we put a number of “barriers” in front of the deal, saying that if the deal was God’s will, those barriers would come down. It was kind of like the fleeces Gideon put out, so he could be doggone sure it was God who was telling him to send his outnumbered army against the Midianites.

At any rate, we left Vancouver, although I’m still on the Board of Gospel Mission Society.

That’s only one of the changes around the Mission and The Lord’s Rain in the past year, especially the arrival of Wesley Chadwick as General Director and Lead Pastor. Wesley is definitely the one the Lord had in mind for the position, to take the Mission to a new level: the excitement we had at the beginning has just grown.

The excitement of the changes is tempered somewhat by other changes, like the departure of Janet and Kim Mogensen, who were married this past May in a ceremony steeped in love and victory. Janet was Assistant Pastor for many years, responsible for Ladies’ Day at The Lord’s Rain and for the entire shower ministry since fall of 2012. Kim’s story is also one of overcoming setbacks – some of them, self-inflicted – and relying on Jesus to carry him through.

There are others who were part of the Mission for a long time, who are moving on to other things; and yet as some depart, others step up. Gary Stephenson has taken on more responsibility in the early mornings, and Joe, a longtime friend of Ken Franklin, who died almost a year ago, stepped in to volunteer at The Lord’s Rain, as well. “It’s my way of paying tribute to Ken,” he told me once, “picking up where he left off.”

Denise, whom I’ve mentioned before, told me recently she would be volunteering during Ladies’ Day, with Janet gone – another way of helping women in situations like the one she came out of.

Eight years on, The Lord’s Rain is in need of structural work, and thanks to the funds raised through the matching challenge from The R. Howard Webster Foundation – over $26,000.00 – we’ll be able to do that. Between that, and ongoing support from the 625 Powell Street Foundation, which stepped in when we had the funding crisis two and a half years ago, The Lord’s Rain will keep serving the people who really need it, in ways that go way beyond a shower and a coffee.

Most importantly, though, as we reach that important milestone, this is something you can look at and say that, in whatever form your support takes, you’re making it happen.

From The Lord's Rain: the Moccasin Telegraph

I keep cudgelling my brains over whether that term is politically incorrect, and the answer that keeps coming back is, No. I (over-)explained this previously, but to recap, the term was coined -- or used a lot -- by the late Paul St Pierre in his stories about life in the Chilcotin region of BC. In his world of Smith and Ol' Antoine, people were united by a trust of the governments in Victoria or Ottawa (especially the former) and a desire to be left alone to live their lives peaceably. Whites and Native Indians lived together and interacted and accepted one another ... and the principal way of getting a message to someone was by word-of-mouth: eventually, by someone telling somebody else and that somebody else passing it along, the message would reach its intended recipient. So "Moccasin Telegraph" was actually a reflection of reality.
 

In this day and age of texting, instant messages, Facebook and Twitter (not Google Plus -- that's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it off a ship ... into a whirlpool), moccasin telegraph is still the main way of finding out about people on the Downtown East Side. This, for example, was pasted up on some hoardings next to Gospel Mission (I blotted out the names):

 

 

This shows you how desperate people can get to find someone who's disappeared into the maelstrom of Hastings Central. Someone will see that and might have seen J----e L----- C-----n and will tell her about it.

Maybe.
 

Denise complained the other day about the lack of contact. "I've lost two friends in the past six months," she said, "so I just stayed in my room for two weeks. And you know what? Nobody called. No one came over. It's not like they don't have my number or know where I live."

I've written about Denise before. She has definitely had a hard life, having been handed over to Child and Family Services, then losing contact, one way or another, with her own children, and losing her husband a few years ago. For all that, she inspires others (including me) by overcoming that and working to help people individually and as a volunteer. It seems, though, that she complains about things to remind us that, despite her "tough cookie" exterior, she still needs caring, too. It's something we could all stand to remember: someone who reaches out to help others often needs to be reminded that he or she is making a difference and is a blessing to others.
 

But her point about people not calling her is illustrative. Tracking down someone in the DTES -- as the people with the poster are -- is one thing: the time delay in realizing something's not right with someone is another. Richard Johnson was in hospital for three weeks with a life-threatening blood infection before word got to us that he was sick. People tend to disappear for a while and then re-surface, so they could be gone for a couple of weeks before someone says, "Say, has anyone seen Bob lately?" Often, it's assumed that they've "just gone somewhere" and will turn up again. Or not. Much has been said about the missing and murdered people from the area (more often women, but quite a few men, too, disappear -- as Denise has been quick to point out), and I'm sure one factor in many of those cases has been the tragic truth that, often, it takes a little longer for people to realize that someone's missing at all.
 

===
 

Barbara is one of the ones who isn't seen much in the area these days -- and for good reason. She's moved out of the DTES. She still comes back to the area, usually for medical appointments, but she finally managed to get a BC Housing apartment in the Commercial & Venables area -- a considerable distance away from the DTES. As others have pointed out, getting out of the DTES is a major step forward, and even though Barb has to come back for some services, the fact that now, she doesn't actually have to stay there is a great step forward.

I introduced Barb to you last year, when she and another woman, Lorraine, came to me, upset that a third woman was trash-talking me and they wanted me to know they wouldn't stand for it. I pointed 0ut that the third woman has "issues" and we needed to cut her slack (although people who would trash-talk me don't necessarily have "issues"!), but it was a moment when three wildly different people came together as "family" -- a sign of what relations can be like on the DTES.
 

Barb gets around on a walker or sometimes a scooter and has multiple physical ailments -- many, the result of drug abuse in years past. She would often talk about her husband, Dennis, who also has health problems and would be still in bed when Barb would go out to the methadone clinic a block from us and then over to The Lord's Rain to say hello. As I was leaving The Lord's Rain the other day, she was arriving -- with Dennis at her side. Dennis is 60-something, stocky, jovial, and you can tell there's a mutual caring between them that's carrying them through some pretty tough times. We chat, we pray -- especially over a blood clot that is "somewhere" in Barb's system and the doctors can't quite pinpoint it. That has Barb very worried, as you can imagine ... although one can also tell that having the new digs is lifting the spirits of both of them.
 

===
 

A debate that sometimes comes up when people have nothing else to argue about is the practice of making people sit through a sermon before giving them dinner at a Mission. I won't go into the argument here, but in an interview for the "In His Image, Too ..." project, Kim Mogensen talks about it in relation to his own "journey" that led him to the DTES for several years. Kim and Janet got married in May, and I wrote to you about it at the time, describing it as a miracle -- which it is, for both of them. But during his years as a drug addict/alcoholic/street person, Kim truly resented having to have his ears bashed in order to get a free meal. "How dare they interrupt my eating time with this Jesus stuff?"
 

Kim often talks about being "that guy who came (into the Mission) between the 'Amen' and 'Pass the food'", but also freely gives credit to the Lord for healing him of those addictions, so something must have been getting through. As my friend, Cal Weber, head of campus ministry at BCIT, says, "water flowing over a rock has the same effect as a hammer: it just takes longer." It also does a more complete job. When the interview with Kim is ready, I'll send you the YouTube link: I think you'll find what Kim has to say very inspiring.
 

===
 

To close, a follow-up on our fundraising campaign for The Lord's Rain: through 2013 and the early part of 2014, we responded to a fund-matching challenge from the R. Howard Webster Foundation, which funds a variety of uplifting projects across Canada. The Foundation had provided a grant of $10,000.00 and then pledged to match up to $10,000 in further funds that we raised. Individuals, churches and other groups contributed just over $8400.00 in that challenge, and the Foundation has now rounded that up to $8500, so the total raised through that campaign is $26,900 and change. It goes without saying that we're grateful to the Webster Foundation for the contribution -- and to everyone who responded to the challenge. This is also on top of the ongoing contribution from The 625 Powell Street Foundation.
 

Of course, foundations like those two wouldn't contribute to something that wasn't having a positive effect, and The Lord's Rain has been doing that. It's been the support from all of you -- in whatever form that support has taken -- that's put The Lord's Rain in that position, and we're most grateful to all of you.
 

If you live or work in Vancouver, please consider stepping up as a volunteer at The Lord's Rain: we have some really dedicated people carrying the load, and any help will be welcome. Please post a comment here and I'll put you in touch with Janet.

The Importance of the Gospel

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about the real antidote to poverty, namely, having the Gospel preached to the poor. Today, I got some reinforcement for that point.

For You, O God, have tested us;
You had refined us as silver is refined.
You brought us into the net;
You laid affliction on our backs.
You have caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water;
But You brought us out to rich fulfillment.
-- Psalm 68:10-12

The Psalm tells is that it's God who brings us into trials: even the deepest muck, the worst disasters, are His doing, in order to test us; and then He brings us out the other side better than before, coming closer to the greatness that God wants for us.

All of us.

The thing is, people in places like the Downtown East Side are dogged by a wonky theology: that somehow, they deserve to be in a place of poverty and despair and that God is punishing them for something they've done in the past.

Not according to the Psalm. God sends us into the fire and the net, lays affliction on us and allows us to be subdued by others in order to refine us. The Gospel supports that message, telling us about the infinite Love and Grace that is God and the sacrifice of His Son. When people even begin to grasp that, they start to see hope, and hope (as I've said I don't know how many times before) is the rarest commodity in the area.

Sadly, the best the world can offer is programs and experiments in "reducing harm", continuing the oppression and despair that holds people down. About God, all they hear is, "You brought us into the net; You laid affliction on our backs," and they don't catch the rest of it.

Let's hope this knowledge and wisdom encourages all in ministry, particularly when dealing wit the poor.

 

THE LORD'S RAIN -- a review

Every so often, it's a good idea to take a step back and review where one is and how one got there. (About a year ago, I preached a sermon called, "It Seemed Like A Bad Idea At The Time," which involved reviewing the things that have "gone wrong" in one's life and realizing that "good" stuff that has happened was actually a result of the "bad" stuff.) With The Lord's Rain, it's important to look back over its history to remind ourselves how God has mandated the project and brought it through all sorts of challenges.

The Lord's Rain is a project we undertook at Gospel Mission in the Fall of 2007, to provide showers to people on Vancouver's Downtown East Side. The whole project has truly been a move of God, with beginnings in a prophecy spoken over our senior Pastor, Barry Babcook, some years back and another spoken over me in September 2007. The word spoken over Barry was that Gospel Mission would expand its influence, reaching out to people on the street; the word over me was that God would start providing me with new ways of reaching people -- and that He would send me on a journey.

The man who spoke the prophecy, Lee Grady, had no earthly way of knowing that I was about to leave on a trip to New York 2 weeks later. That certainly got my attention and opened my mind to these "new ways" while on the trip. I looked in at the Bowery Mission and saw that they have a program to provide showers to people, and I'd been thinking about how the street people could get clean. But we had no place to build showers at the Mission, so it seemed to be just A Neat Idea.

Then we learned that the group which had occupied one of the two ground-floor spaces in our building (Gospel Mission is on the second floor of an old 2-storey walkup) had moved out because they couldn't afford the rent. So Barry asked the landlord if he could give us two weeks to come up with a plan for building and funding the project. He said "yes".

That was really the first sign that God wanted this to go ahead. The landlord is a businessman, and apparently he had at least one prospective renter. But he was willing to put that on hold to give us a chance.

We had $0.00 in the bank for this, so I had to start from square one with the fundraising. I wrote to a prominent Christian businessman, asking if he'd underwrite the project. We were turned down flat. I sent an email to anyone I could think of in my Christian circle of friends and acquaintances. Nada. My home church sent an email to its members.

Two days before the deadline, we had maybe $150 per month in pledges. We estimated that we needed $1500. Then came two phone calls, totalling $4000 in cash. We met the landlord the Saturday, and picked up the keys.

Then the media found out about it and started giving the project exposure. More people started contributing and others stepped forward with offers of help. My former church in Duncan, which has a lot of tradespeople in its congregation, put together a work party, which made three trips to Vancouver to build the sub-floor and frames. As Barry and I discussed where we'd actually get the showers, the Lord spoke to me, "Andrew Sheret".

Andrew Sheret is a bath and plumbing supply company, and in 1992, I MC'd their 100th anniversary dinner at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. I hadn't had any contact with them since, but it was worth a shot. I emailed the president, asking if they could give us a discount on the supplies we needed. He emailed back, saying, essentially "we'll give them to you".

Another sign that the Lord was going to see this through no matter what: the miracle that happened when I made a costly mistake. I thought I'd locked the door to the jobsite, but it turned out I hadn't, and someone walked in and helped himself to some plumbing tools. After beating myself up for a few hours, the Lord told me to do what I do best: write a news release. "People who put their money and time into this have to know that this isn't going to stop it," He said.

Two TV stations picked up on the news release -- which was an upbeat release, stating that we're still going ahead, despite the setback. One of the reporters, CTV's Peter Grainger, very carefully did not turn it into a "whine" festival. Rather, he focused on the vision of the showers project, and only mentioned the theft as almost an afterthought. Then, Pamela Martin picked up on the theft and suggested it'd be nice if people could help replace the tools.

The next day, the phone rang at my home. It was a businessman who didn't want his name used, and whom the Lord had told to help out. I met him at his office and he planked down a roll of bills. "You think $8000 would help?"

There's a passage in the Book of Isaiah, which says, "the Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, and who shall disannul it?" In other words, if God decides something is going to happen, nothing will stop it. The success of The Lord's Rain begins with God's determination that it's what the area needs. It's also due to the fact that it's been conceived, funded, built and supplied by a variety of people bringing their own gifts to the table. It's not the work of a large organization or a single contributor: it's people who care about what's going on in their own city, and want to help in whatever way they can.

The project finally opened its doors April 30, 2008, and to this date, some 9,000 showers have been taken. The place is open 5 early mornings a week (one of those mornings is for women only), plus one midday, and on Sundays, people with disabilities can take part in the Gospel Mission services upstairs via closed-circuit TV.  

The Lord's Rain has been about more than hot water, soap and towels, too. It quickly became a place where people could come for fellowship, free coffee, and a place to escape from the street where they can talk with people who don't judge them. We soft-pedalled the connection with the church upstairs for a while, but it was clear that you couldn't hide that Light under a bushel. People who would never come into a church, would come in and start asking about the Bible, or asking for prayer. Some have started coming to the Gospel Mission services. 

One thing that's become apparent is that people "on the outside" want to support The Lord's Rain. There's so much negative publicity about the Downtown East Side: people see that there's poverty and despair, but they also see and hear activists making wild demands, protesting, occupying private property and essentially trying to shame governments into action -- pointing out there's a problem but demanding that someone else fix it -- with little tangible result. Over and over again, though, we've seen that when people hear about The Lord's Rain and see a project that is more of a hand-up than a hand-out, they get behind it.

We really saw that in the spring of 2013, when funds dried up and it was becoming likely that we'd have to close The Lord's Rain. A reporter with Metro Newspaper -- the free daily paper handed out on the public transit system -- wrote a story, and within a week, enough funds came in to keep the place open for the foreseeable future. Two Foundations stepped up -- one, The 625 Powell Street Foundation -- guaranteed the budget for at least a year (and still hasn't stopped with the support), and the other, The R. Howard Webster Foundation, issued a fund-matching challenge, which led to over $27,000.00 coming in.

I believe it's all an indication that God wants more for His people than feeding programs and emergency shelters: Hope. If they don't have Hope, why should they take the steps needed to get treatment and turn away from the street life?

Where do they find that Hope?  

Jesus tells us that the signs of His presence are: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. (Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22) And that's more important than "the world" might say: so many people come into The Lord's Rain -- even though it's not an overtly evangelical operation -- asking for prayer, or asking questions about God and the Bible, and we've realized that we've been providing another Basic Human Need. That's the need to know that God still loves them.

Got Water?

And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. -- Matt. 10:24

It's hot in Vancouver. I know it sounded silly to the lady from Mississippi whom I met last week - back home, for her, it's up around 100 F with 80% humidity - but here on the left coast, when the temperature hits 30 (upper 80s Fahrenheit), we start to seek out stores with air conditioning.

It's going to be a concern for the homeless and otherwise street people on the Downtown East Side. They don't have as many options for staying hydrated. So this is an appeal to you today: if you could pick up a case of bottled water (London Drugs has them on for $3.99 for a case of 24) and bring it to Gospel Mission, 327 & 331 Carrall Street - (not to be confused with Union Gospel - and they're giving out water, too), we can hand them out both at The Lord's Rain and upstairs.

You probably won't find anyone at The Lord's Rain this afternoon, but come to the church upstairs on Sunday after 12 noon.