Casino plans and the Whore of Babylon

Statement from Gospel Mission regarding the proposed new Casino on False Creek.

Gospel Mission welcomes the prospect of an expanded casino on False Creek. The casino will definitely generate new business for us: new people finding themselves caught in their addictions, broke and in debt; and we will welcome them to our rescue mission to hear the Word of God, share a hot meal, and re-connect with Hope that goes beyond the empty promise of easy money through gambling. We find that when people have their backs against the wall and hit rock bottom at the same time, they inevitably turn to Jesus. We have seen that with drug addicts and alcoholics who have come through our doors over the past 82 years, and now we look forward to this new crop for harvest. Further, since we do not ourselves receive money from gambling operations -- including the relatively tiny pot reserved for charities in BC's gaming revenue -- but place our confidence in Jehovah Jireh, the Lord Who Provides, we know we will be there to catch whoever falls. We are, after all, just a stone's throw away from the casino: a six-sided stone, if you catch our drift.

Hands up, all those who caught a bit of sarcasm there ......

In one of its weekly collections of news clips (at least, this was the case the last time I read the magazine), Sports Illustrated would have a kicker called "This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us"; some weird, usually funny, statement or event that suggests that things are not as they should be.

There are plenty of those around right now, and nowhere near amusing -- the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, for example, is the latest. Add it up with the fires, flooding and tornadoes in Australia, earthquakes in diverse places, vicious and short-notice (if not unpredictable) weather events and all the issues surrounding the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout last year, and an inescapable reality emerges: the signs Jesus foretold of His return are coming to pass.

As the song says, People Get Ready.

But the end-times prophecies are not all bad news -- after all, Jesus' return, and God taking over His Creation, bringing the New Jerusalem and coming to live among His people is good news and to be embraced and welcomed as well as prepared-for. And the Book of Revelation has lots of cause to celebrate.

Take, for example, the current controversy in Vancouver over plans to build a "destination casino" next to BC Place Stadium. There already is a high-end casino there: this would expand it and include a resort hotel and seven restaurants. And the opposition has been swift and loud. Opponents don't want Vancouver to turn into a northern version of Las Vegas and they're not swayed by the proponents' arguments. Health officials have waded into the debate -- coming out against the casino, saying problem gambling is already an epidemic in BC and this will make it worse.

I've blogged before about my views on gambling in general, but I'm noticing something else here, tied to end-times talk. In the past, arguments about the amount of money being generated for health care and community charities have won the day for the gaming proponents; but this time, those points -- along with the repeated assertion that it will "revitalize the area" and "boost Vancouver tourism" -- seem hollow and desperate.

("Boost Vancouver tourism"? In case anyone has missed the past 100 years, Vancouver already has a good tourism industry, with wonderful restaurants, entertainment -- Grammy-award-winning symphony, the Arts Club, the Playhouse, the Jazz Festival, the Yale, Gastown; not to mention natural beauty which you can still see from downtown despite the forest of high-rises. If any place does not need a casino to suck people inside and suck their pockets empty, it's Vancouver.)

You'll find that "something else" in Revelation 17-18, which refers to The Whore of Babylon. I see that as a description of the world economy, where kings and merchants worship and bow down to this gorgeous, jewel-bedecked woman, but when God steps in and exposes her for what she is, the kings and merchants cut and run and try to stay as far away from her burning as possible -- all the while bemoaning her demise.

What I'm seeing with the casino debate is the failure of the "money argument" to sway people in favor of the project, and the increasingly desperate tone that argument is taking. Is the Whore going down? Are people starting to back away? Are merchants starting to wail for her?

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works:

in the cup which she hath filled, fill her to the double.

-- Rev. 18:5-6

And the Word of God encourages us to realize that this world economy has oppressed and ignored the people and that we are to ignore and oppress that Whore right back. Could we be seeing this now?

Of course, to close the loop back to the statement at the beginning here, we'll be there to help people: but there are times we kinda wish we didn't have to.

Fresh Eyes in the neighbourhood

Diane is one of our new workers at The Lord's Rain. A retired nurse, she responded to a letter I'd written to The Vancouver Sun just after Christmas 2010 about a lengthy item on people who volunteer for the big dinners put on by charities at that time of year. My point was that there are volunteers working in the area 365 days a year and that we need more of them. Diane has now begun running The Lord's Rain -- usually alongside Randall but lately I've been filling in for Randall -- on Wednesday mornings. During our times working together, she's talked about some of her observations -- particularly after Randall had taken her on a "walkabout". Recently, I asked her to write them down. Here's what she sent, followed by an exchange of emails between her and a Vancouver city councillor about her concerns.

I started volunteering at the Lords Rain at the beginning of the year.

At the end of my third shift, my co-volunteer Randall took me on a tour to show me more of the DTE

WHAT HORRIFIED ME

After three shifts I was used to the drug dealing that went on in the alley opposite to the Lords Rain, I was not prepared for the extent of the dealing that is all pervasive in the area, especially on Welfare Wednesday. The dealers were on every street corner, and outside every ATM and cheque cashing shop. Many of the residents were spaced out, and walking along Hastings Street by the Ovaltine cafe there were at least four women sitting on the sidewalk injecting themselves with obviously pre used needles

I wish I had made notes at the time-the following are my recollections, including information from Randall.

First United Church*

We entered to see a group of volunteers providing bowls, soap and water to “walk ins” for foot care

Some people were lying fully clothed in the corridor

The meal room was very large-according to one occupant, a Rabbi had conducted a short service there. The long dining tables were covered with spilt coffee

I looked in on one of the sleeping rooms-bunk beds-very close together-nearly all were occupied (at 9.30 a.m.) by men sleeping fully clothed on top of a sheet

According to Randall, it is open 24/7 which does not allow time for cleaning, there are three bathrooms for the men, and three for the women

The Bottle Depot

A dark, dismal, depressing place

The binners come in and get money for their bottles and cans-the drug dealers are waiting at the door to relieve them of that mone

People were lining up to get free food all over the area-some did not appear to be homeless-(according to Randall there are some who abuse the system )

Different charities run food and soup kitchens

WHAT SURPRISED ME

The resources available to people in the area, and how up beat some of the helpers are 

The Evelyn Saller Center

A well used shower programme

Meals available at a price which I felt gave those partaking a certain dignity and self worth

A pool table and area for socialising

Health, delousing, and laundry facilities

“A Health Clinic” ( I cannot remember the name, but I do remember the cheery and very funny pharmacist)

Downtown East Side Personal Development School

Life Skills Centre

Job search assistance, computers

Carnegie Centre

Meals available at a cheaper price

Socialising

Computers

Newspapers

The Door is Open

The day we were there was “ladies day”- a dedicated group of volunteers, mostly from the West side of town were preparing lunch, mainly from donated food

About 12 women were seated at tables socialising-quite a good atmosphere

***

Diane also paid a visit to the showers program at Kitsilano Community Centre. It operates on Saturday mornings. 

I wanted to see how this programme was run, and the coordinator kindly agreed to let me observe

The programme, which is totally run by volunteers apart from one Community centre staff person, takes place each Saturday from 7-9 a.m.

I counted about twelve volunteers

• 2 at the entrance to the Center where guest sign in-their bags are put into large plastic bags, carts are tagged, and they are given a ticket for them “Valet Parking"
• 3 in the kitchen cooking up a full breakfast
• 2 at the cereal, hot porridge and muffin table
• 2 at the coffee(pre prepared and donated by Starbucks) and juice table
• 2 at the clothing, toiletries, towels table

Friendly, outgoing volunteers, mainly from the West side, some attend the Catholic Church next door-very respectful to the guests 

The guests were nearly all male, some coming every week from the DTE, others from the surrounding neighbourhood. Many were regulars-nearly all were appreciative

Much of the food and clothing is donated-socks and gloves are purchased and given out to anyone who asks

The showers are the same ones used by the regular center users, and although no tally was made as to how many people had showers, I counted five people in the room at one time-this area was not supervised

There had been a problem with bed bugs-the center had to be closed for cleaning

The coordinator gives everyone a talk re the problem before they are allowed to enter

There are written guidelines for volunteers with emphasis on personal safety

  

My own thoughts re above

There seems to be a definite hierarchy within the world of the homeless, which ranges from the hopelessness of the women outside the Ovaltine Cafe, to the (learned) helplessness of some of the men in the food lines, as evidenced by the downward slope of their shoulders and downcast eyes, to the hopefulness of the people who are trying to turn their lives around

I feel angry when I see how people are “housed” on the East Side-such conditions would never be tolerated on the West Side

I feel angry and baffled when money is handed out every month to people who immediately spend it on drugs-I cannot understand how there cannot be a system in place to ensure that that money goes toward food and shelter

*Diane had some further thoughts on the cleanliness at First United, which she shared in a Jan. 29 letter to Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang.

Dear Councillor Jang

I have just read the following in today's edition of the Globe and Mail-the story was referring to tent cities in Seattle: "Health and safety concerns - for prospective residents and staff- make tent encampments a non-starter, Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang said. 'It's just not good public health,' he said.
I volunteer with one of the shower programmes on the downtown east side-another volunteer took me on a tour of the area. I had the chance to take a look inside the First United Church on the corner of Hastings and Gore, and was horrified at what I saw-I am assuming that you have been there, so will not go into any more detail.

A large number of people are sleeping in very close quarters under one roof, with a limited number of bathrooms and exits. If you have not been to this facility lately, I hope you will take the time to revisit it-unannounced.

I would also appreciate your telling me what role the city plays in its funding, and what is being done to ensure that safety and health standards are being met.

Yours sincerely
***
Councillor Jang replied that same day,
 
Hi Diane,


I am well aware of First United. The shelter there is being funded now entirely by the Province of BC. The city set it up initially with the Province and it became very popular due to the needs in the area. Just so you know, we are aware of the issues there - mainly over crowding on some nights and our fire and VPD inspectors are there regulalry, as are folks from Coastal Health to make sure all are safe. To date, any issues have been dealt with by the church and Coastal Health have been satisfied. Over the past two plus years, although crowded, the facilities there have not had any outbreaks, etc, likely due to the cleaning protocol and the fact there are adequate washroom facilities. I do not know what parts you have seen, but there are beds there now when in the first year there were just mats and pews.

Tent cities are a problem as there are no proper santitation/washroom facilities and no way to regulate heat. When tent cities have popped up in Vancouver in the past, there were severe health problems.
 
***
Diane copied her MLA, Dr Margaret McDiarmid, on the exchange, and was told that had been forwarded to Rich Coleman, Minister of Public Safety -- and the minister whose department would oversee the program.

Shouldn't do it to a dog ...

The outrage du jour in British Columbia lately has been the slaughter of sled dogs by a sled-dog tour operator in Whistler. Apparently, these dogs were deemed expendable when the company experienced a downturn after the initial post-Olympics surge in business.

It's a horrifying case, both in and of itself and also in the exercise in "rush to judgment". There's been this outpouring of anger -- including death threats -- against the company, the person who did the killing (who's just been granted worker's compensation benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder) and the Olympic games; there's even been a Facebook page set up (oooh! a Facebook page! Now they're really in trouble!)

Interestingly, none of this outrage seems to be directed at the general public - the tourists who created a perceived demand for this service in the first place. It's a little like demanding Big Macs and Quarter-Pounders and then complaining that the South American forests have been destroyed to increase beef cattle lands.

Mind you, God is not impressed, either: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10 KJV)

(Reading this, Temple Grandin is definitely more in line with the will of God than most animal-rights activists: reputedly, one of her key observations about cattle management was that in dying, animals provide us with food, so we have to treat them with respect while they're alive. But I digress ...)

But one of the sidebars to this outrage has been people pointing to the lack of outrage when it comes to inhumane efforts against people -- like the deaths of 21 children who were under the care of the Ministry of Children and Families. The province's Child Advocate identified those, and I can tell you, there wasn't anywhere near the public outcry over that than there has been over the dogs.

And let me add this to the mix: where is the outrage over the human condition on Vancouver's Skid Road? Why have so many Christians, who are called to reach out to the poor and destitute, abrogated that responsibility and handed it off to a vast socio-political experiment in not-so-benign neglect? Solutions like harm-reduction and mixing affordable and market housing run counter to the will of God:

• mixed-use housing is not a bad idea, per se, but as I pointed out in my previous post, it keeps drug addicts in the very area where their problems are all around them. They need to move -- like Abram was instructed by God -- to a different place, so they can move towards the promise God as for them
• (it also provides developers an excellent opportunity to promise an affordable housing component in their plans and then, when sales go sideways -- as happened with Olympic Village -- cry poverty and demand to be released from their promise)
• as I've said numerous times before, Jesus was not into harm reduction; He was (and still is) into harm elimination -- total healing, not just band-aids
• drug advocates rail that the US "War on Drugs" has been a failure, but the peace treaty with drugs we have in this society has led to the problems on Skid Road today -- the reason why people are terrified of walking through the area between Chinatown and Gastown. Neither works, because of the spirit behind them: the spirit of a "quick fix".
• The US approach is to try to drop the Monty Python 16-ton weight on the drug industry;
• the approach we see in Canada is to make life easier for the addicts: lots of social housing, clean needles and a "safe place to shoot up";
• the court system fails to back up law enforcement officers;
• the news media glamorize pushers by publicizing the dollar value of drug seizures and printing photos of gang leaders who look like they belong more in GQ than Hotel Crowbar

The devil provides quick fixes; God provides solutions.

God's solution involves recognizing that drug addicts and the mentally ill are fallen human beings like all of us -- everyone has a different response mechanism and theirs has involved a more spectacular crash. It's the duty before God for all of us to reach out with love and hope that overpower the need for the drugs.

I'm not just talking about the addicts. I grieve for the dealers and enforcers and lookouts I see on the street outside Gospel Mission: lurking about in their hoodies, talking on cell phones, swaggering back and forth looking as tough as they can, talking among themselves as if they're old friends, but you know deep down, none of them trusts the others. What will their lives be like in 5, 10, 20 years -- if they're still alive? Believe it or not, we as Christians have a duty to reach out to them, too.

But where is the outrage? Do we really care more for sled dogs than for other humans? Jesus told us there'd be days like these -- when "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24:12 KJV) -- as the world awaits His return.

Or is this lack of outrage really because deep down, we're convicted that -- to use Walt Kelly's overworked line from Pogo -- we have met the enemy and he is us?

Some heresy about the DTES

There’s been a lot of talk lately about development on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, with people concerned that “gentrification” (the bogeyman du jour in that section of town) will push the poor out of the area as housing prices rise; and then where would they go?



Unfortunately, the response from some of the advocates for affordable housing – as in the Vancouver Sun op-ed piece on Feb. 2  – makes the case that mixing social strata doesn’t work and demands that unnamed people and entities build more single-room occupancy (SRO) spaces and upgrade existing ones. The advocates don’t actually say who should pay for this, although I’m sure that, if asked, we would hear the usual responses: “the city can afford to spend millions on bike lanes” ... “the province can spend $600 million on a new roof for BC Place, but ...” ... yadda-yadda-yadda ...

Here’s a piece of heresy: what’s so great about keeping the poor on the Downtown East Side?

Really: isn’t this build-more-social-housing-on-the-DTES position little more than a call to perpetuate the ghetto?

This comes from ministering, observing and talking with people in the area, and for no compensation and with a sole interest, if I may say so myself, in seeing people’s lives change, turn around and move forward. Let's get real: this is Skid Road, a cauldron of despair, drugs, crime and prostitution; why would we want to pursue policies and strategies that don’t help people move on and instead make it easier for them to stay in that cauldron?

Perhaps it’s because there can be a buck in it for people who advocate that approach. But that would be cynical. Moi?

See, the first thing we need to do is stop glamorizing the place, and we've been doing that since the 1970s when the term Downtown East Side started getting traction. I remember thinking the term was kinda cool – a sort of New York cachet – like “Lower East Side” or “The Village”. These days, someone’s trying to coin “SoMa” for a stretch of Main Street (“South Main”, get it?): kind of like “SoHo” – South of Houston Street – in New York. (Vancouver has a history of wanting to be Just Like The Big Cities – so long as it’s not Toronto – and that goes back over a century, when architecture like the Dominion Building on Hastings resembled some of the buildings of the time in San Francisco. Unfortunately, a lot of its treatment of poor people resembles New York as depicted in “How The Other Half Lives” – in 1878.)

Next, we need to turn up our BS detectors when someone comes along with an idea they claim will “help” or “humanize” the “homeless”. Look at the people whose political and/or personal careers have been built on being “advocates” for the poor. Now consider the fruits of their labor. Recently, the UBC Museum of Anthropology cancelled an exhibit of portraits of the women who went missing from the Downtown East Side over a 10-year period. That was one of the wisest things a public body could have done, as it was responding to a couple of advocacy groups, which complained that the exhibit was primarily an exercise in self-promotion by the artist.

Only when we de-glamorize the area do we see that we are dealing with human beings, not subjects in a social experiment. Nor are they numbers on a “homelessness audit”: figures for a politician to point to and declare that’s his or her goal to have new rooms in fleabag “hotels” provided during their term in office.

We have to face the reality that the heart of the problems on the Downtown East Side is drugs. That, in itself, is not a big revelation, but the focus has strayed away from the need to get people off drugs. Do that, and you’re on your way to alleviating problems of health, crime, prostitution and the general fear people have of the area. We’ve tried the experiment of making it easier and “healthier” for people to take drugs, and it has not worked. For all its self-generated statistical evidence of success, the current approach of “harm reduction”, including places like InSite (the heroin equivalent of filter-tipped cigarettes), has not worked. Take a walk along Hastings between Cambie and Gore and tell me it’s made the streets safer (the way it was sold to the public almost a decade ago) and given people a new chance at life.

I believe we need to consider forced recovery treatment, not as a “punishment” for being a drug addict, but as duty of society to its people. The civil libertarians would claim that addicts are being denied their rights and that people have a choice to be addicts or quit, but I submit that someone who is lurching along the street, bent double, looking for a grain of crack that someone might have dropped and foregoing food for the sake of another hit has already lost that freedom of choice. It’s not their fault: it’s the insidious and deadly nature of the drugs.

There are three important elements, I believe, to changing people’s lives in this way:

1. Get them into treatment – real treatment programs, using proven techniques, that involve quitting and staying off

2. Help them develop a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. By doing that, they have something to focus on, rather something to turn away from. It’s the principle of “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” In this case, “all these things” means the “pleasure” derived from drug-taking.

3. Set up the treatment program anywhere but the Downtown East Side. If you want to get clean, get out of the cesspool. And stay out. Probably the best venue is a farm-like atmosphere or something else related to good, solid, productive work. Access should be severely limited. I can hear the howls of “concentration camp” now from the civil libertarians, but I’ve long since stopped believing they’re actually on the side of the poor (see above).

As I’ve said before, the problem on Skid Road is not homelessness. It’s hope-lessness. We need to restore hope – that intangible reason for carrying on; the liberating knowledge that none of us is capable of turning our lives around without Jesus. He is the hope that people need: the unconditional love that never fails – never has and never will.

And yes, I do see the results of that message as I see people start to rise up out of the ashes, get off the drugs ... or even start to smile again. But it’s tough to reinforce that message when the world around them – even people like mayors, members of Parliament and those who claim to be acting in their best interests – keep taking positions that such people, because they’re mentally ill and/or drug-addicted, are entitled to remain drug addicts, living on Skid Road.

It is not in our interest as a society to let any of our people live this way. God has not given up on these people: neither should we. If you talk with anyone in the Skid Road area, you’ll find they all have their stories, they all have experiences ... and they all have brains and things they can contribute. I meet artists, teachers, academics, working stiffs, chefs: people who’ve made one or two really bad mistakes and have wound up broke, on drugs or mentally ill. These people have gifts and talents to contribute and we as a society are denying ourselves those gifts.

Who among us hasn’t made a mistake? Who among us is without sin? Or are we actually being subtly self-righteous and judgmental, figuring they “made their choices” and are “paying the price”? Wracked with societal guilt, we then wail and gnash our teeth and ride off madly in all directions trying to “do something”. We forget – or ignore – the fact that Jesus already “paid the price” for everybody’s mistakes and then instructed us to reach out and help those whose fall was longer and harder than ours.

A seeming disconnect

It's hard to know what to make of this one.

Being Christmastime, it's not unusual for churches and other groups to make forays into the Downtown East Side and food or meals or do something Yuletide-ish. It's quite nice, really: Wednesday night, a group of young people strolled through the streets, carolling; Saturday night, an a cappella Gospel chorus rocked it up in Pigeon Park. In many cases, people are out there because they want to do something to help the situation, because they hear and read about it so much in the media. Don't think the people in the area don't appreciate it. But last night -- Monday -- something strange happened that can't help but leave one wondering.



The pile was about 5-times this size and in front of the window.





I arrived at the Mission with the Monday night bread pickup from Cobs in West Van to find a mountain (I kid you not) of clothes piled in front of the building. The doorway to The Lord's Rain was blocked; there was a Canadian Tire shopping cart in among the clothes, and a guy was picking through there.

There are two signs on the window of The Lord's Rain: NO SELLING OF ANYTHING IN FRONT OF GOSPEL MISSION OR THE LORD'S RAIN. So I pointed that sign out.

"I'm not sellin' nothin'," he said. "I'm picking some stuff out."

"Then whose is it?"

"The group that was over there (Pigeon Park) put it here. They said they'd just leave it here and we could go through it."

"They", it turned out, was a church group, but no one seemed to know the name. They had set up tables in Pigeon Park and handed out turkey dinner, boxes of food and used clothing. One fellow told me there must have been 500 people there. Global TV covered it, so they apparently had some advance work going on.

It was truly a "drive-by" blessing. I had gone to the Mission at 5 to pick up the bins for the bread; then we got back to the Mission around 7:45. During that time span, they had arrived, set up, served, torn down, and left, their final act being to take the unclaimed clothes and dump them in front of our building -- unaware that it was private property.

I'm not an alarmist, but one wacko with a cigarette lighter and a mad-on at the world could have done a lot of damage to our building and the people at the service inside.

So I piled as much of the stuff as I could -- clothes of various descriptions, shoes (some of which matched) and so forth -- onto the shopping cart and pushed the cart around the corner, putting the rest of it beside. Then I called Global TV, to see if they had a contact. I wanted to talk about this with someone who was responsible before deciding how to respond. The assignment desk, however, couldn't find the initial news release and the reporter only remembered talking to someone named "Sean".

Randall told me this morning he'd tried to speak with someone who was serving food and got a terse -- almost rude -- response. "We're a church group." "Oh, yes? Which church?" "Just a church."

One of the things that really ticks me off is that it's not as if no one was in the Mission at the time. As you can see in the photo, there are at least two large signs saying "CARRALL STREET CHURCH" on the front: there's also the illuminated sign showing The Lord's Rain, the wooden sign outside Barry's office window and a big flashing pseudo-neon sign that says "OPEN". Surely, somebody might have thought to ask if it was OK.

(To which I would have replied, "no", because we already have an enormous supply of clothing that we're trying to get rid of. But I never got that chance.)

Why give out boxes of non-perishable food when it could have bolstered the Food Bank's supplies? Why hand out clothing with no backup plan for the stuff that doesn't get taken? And why be rude to a "local" who just wants to know where you're from?

Not having spoken directly to any of the organizers, it's hard to say if they were being contemptuous or ignorant (dumping what was essentially junk could be a product of either or both); but it's a sign of what appears to be a disconnect between suburban churches and ministries on the Downtown East Side. It's rare to hear from them the rest of the year, and evidently this church group was unaware of our existence. They mean well, and they want to do something, but I really think the onus is on them to educate themselves about who's already doing what. The dinner idea is lovely, but what happens on the other 364 nights of the year? Who's there? How are they dealing with the situation? What do they need? (Hint: the answer is not necessarily money.) If they find those answers, they can concentrate their efforts and their obvious well meaning where they do the most good.

People living on the DTES -- druggies, pushers, prostitutes, mentally ill, people on disability pensions, down-and-outers -- are often like kids. You can throw all the money you want to at them, but at the end of the day, all they really want is someone's time, attention ... and love. And as Christians, we're supposed to love the unlovely. Trust me: on the DTES it's not hard.

After all, as I've said, there's really no shortage of money, food or clothing, but the laborers are few.

A special appeal from The Lord's Rain

This was sent to the Friends Of The Lord's Rain this morning. A special appeal -- as if people don't have enough hands reaching out for "special donations to remember the ******** in this Festive Season". But it's something that just came up, so I'm putting this on the SkyTrain to see if it gets off at Metrotown.

Our clothes dryer, a valuable donation when we opened The Lord's Rain 2-1/2 years ago, has packed it in. As John Cleese might put it, it has dried its last towel, shed its final lint, shuffled off its heating coil and gone to join the Choir Invisibule: it is an ex-dryer.



In a street outreach for which the very raison d’être involves showers and therefore clean, dry towels, the dryer is a necessity. In the earliest days, we did attempt to hang the towels around the facility, but that was unreliable and did tend to leave the towels rather hard, reminding one of the dialogue from the old "Barney Miller" TV series:

BARNEY: What happened to the towel in the bathroom?
YEMANA: It broke.

Given our space and electrical constraints, the solution is a stacking washer-dryer unit that can fit into the space where the washer and dryer are currently located.

SO ... would any of you be willing to contribute towards the purchase of such a unit? Are you aware of any companies that could donate or offer a discount on one? We're grateful for any suggestions or leads you might have.
 
Any such donations or leads can be directed to Gospel Mission -- http://www.gospelmission.net/ -- 604-684-3097 ... or leave a comment on this blog.

NEWS RELEASE: Weston again supports Gospel Mission

Vancouver church, showers project is again “President’s Choice”

(Vancouver, Dec. 8, 2010) -- For the second year in a row, Gospel Mission and The Lord’s Rain are receiving a timely infusion of support from a major Canadian philanthropic organization. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation has made a donation of $3,000.00 to help the Mission. This grant, presented to the Mission by Trustee Mark W. Mitchell, follows a $15,000.00 donation received in 2009 as part of a one-time, special initiative to assist charities in surviving the global economic downturn, when support from “usual sources” might be expected to decline.

Founded in 1929, Gospel Mission is a combined church and street outreach. Since the 1940s, it has been housed in an 1888 brick building that was originally a saloon. In 2007, the Mission took over a ground-floor space in the same building to construct The Lord’s Rain, which provides showers for people in the area who need them. A letter from Trustee Wendy Rebanks, who put forward this 2010 grant, notes that since The Lord’s Rain opened in April 2008, it has become “a community gathering place, where people can escape from the street and find friendly conversation”.


“To say we’re grateful is an understatement,” says Assistant Pastor Drew Snider. “Gospel Mission and The Lord’s Rain have been built over the years by a variety of people bringing a variety of ‘offerings to the storehouse’ – what they can, as they can. Contributions like these from The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, combined with those from individuals and churches, let our friends here know that a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life are right behind them in their struggle.”


The W. Garfield Weston Foundation is a private Canadian family foundation, established in the 1950’s by Willard Garfield Weston and his wife Reta. In 1924 Garfield inherited his father’s company and during his life established bakeries and other successful enterprises throughout Canada and in many parts of the world. Today, these businesses include the George Weston Limited and Loblaw Companies Limited, companies in food retailing, processing and distribution. The founders believed that as the funds are generated through the hard work and success of these Canadian companies, grants should be given in Canada for the benefit of Canadians. For three generations, The W. Garfield Weston Foundation has maintained a family tradition of supporting charitable organizations across Canada. Today the Foundation directs the majority of its funds to projects in the fields of land conservation, education, and science in Canada’s North.


Gospel Mission is an all-volunteer organization covered by the Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada. It is cross-denominational in its approach: a church for those uncomfortable going to church. The Lord’s Rain offers what senior pastor Barry Babcook calls “Jesus with the skin on”. Gospel Mission services are Sunday afternoons and Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings with meals served after each. Wednesday is Bible study and Thursday night is movie night. Services are also shown via closed-circuit TV in The Lord’s Rain, to accommodate people with disabilities.


The Lord’s Rain is currently open early Tuesday and Saturday mornings, Monday and Friday in the early afternoon, with a goal of opening six days a week in the early morning to give people a place to go when the shelters turn them out: this depends on volunteers stepping forward. Anyone interested in volunteering may contact the Mission via the website or by phone (604-684-3097).

Contact Drew Snider 604-803-3199

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