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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.

When Cigarettes Saved Lives

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t smoke. I grew up in a time when kids who smoked were considered juvenile delinquents, children with whom “good children” (like me) didn’t associate. I pestered my parents until they quit smoking. A relationship fell apart because she smoked and I tried to get her to quit. (She did try, but then, looking for a replacement for the hand-mouth motion associated with smoking, decided to have coffee, instead. She complained of hyperventilating by 11am. This may give some insight into the relationship as a whole.)

(I should point out that I have no use for the current social battle against tobacco use. No, I don’t want people smoking in my air-space, but I’d rather give a smoker the opportunity to be courteous and give myself the option to be gracious, than have some law forcing the issue.)

Anyway, the headline there is not Orwellian newspeak, like many other attempts at justifying the unjustifiable. But a few years ago, I wrote about a Vietnam veteran and his face-to-face encounter with “Charlie Cong” – an enemy soldier – just after the rest of his unit had been wiped out in an ambush. After staring at each other for what seemed like ages, the VC soldier held up two fingers to his mouth. Rudy – the American – realized he was asking for a cigarette. Rudy had some, so they sat together, had a smoke, and communicated as best they could with sign language. The VC soldier showed Rudy photos of his family. They went separate ways, and when Rudy got back to camp, he told his CO he couldn’t kill North Vietnamese anymore.

So I got thinking the other day: what if Rudy and “Charlie” didn’t smoke? What shared social experience would they have had, that would have led to that turning point in their lives? A drink? I doubt either would have had a hip flask or a canteen of water, and would they have shared? What if one was a mean drunk? How about marijuana – the smokable weed that’s apparently exempt from the social convention against smoking? Again, I doubt they would have had any handy.

Also, consider the circumstances: Rudy had just seen his entire unit wiped out. Who knows how many VC were killed in that exchange, but “Charlie” was all alone when it was over, just like Rudy. Smoking would have calmed their nerves, and smoking together broke through the barrier that war imposes, turning the Invading Imperialist American and the Ruthless Jungle Guerrilla into two men, sitting together, chatting.

Rudy was medical’d out within a week after telling his CO that he couldn’t kill “those people”. “Charlie” disappeared into the jungle – who knows what happened to him? Maybe he was killed the next day; maybe he, too, realized he couldn’t kill people and got out of the war and back to his family. We probably couldn’t count the number of people whose lives were saved, because Rudy had a couple of cigarettes that day.

Gospel Mission and the 3 P's

In one of his sermons on Living Truth, Charles Price talked about the three items in the Ark of the Covenant: the stone tablets containing God's Law, a jar of manna and Aaron's staff. Each represents a different aspect of our relationship with God. The tablets represent God's purpose, the manna represents His provision; Aaron's staff represents His power: this is the staff that blossomed and bore almonds while the staves of the representatives of the other 11 tribes of Israel remained sticks; Aaron's staff manifested God's power and life through Him.

Does that not apply to Gospel Mission? God's purpose has been playing out pretty much since the Mission was founded in 1929, in the Mission's principle of "God's food first" and its emphasis on being a place of Worship, ministry of the Gospel and demonstration of the love of Christ.

God's provision is represented in numerous ways, particularly in The Lord's Rain. It provides a place to meet a Basic Human Need, which is to be clean; but the fact that the facility has always met its rent and utility bills, often through miracles (OK: consistently through miracles), shows how God has made sure the ministry's worldly needs are being met.

And now we come to God's power. From what I've been hearing and reading on the Gospel Mission Society Facebook page, that has been descending, big-time, on the Mission. I'm getting reports of healings, people receiving the Holy Spirit, and other demonstrations of God's love and grace. It bruises my ego to say it, but it's happened since I was moved out (by God, I should point out) and Wesley Chadwick was moved in. (God has His way of moving us around like chess pieces: we usually have no idea what He's doing at the time, but He eventually shows us when we need to know it.)

This is exactly what God has shown me the Mission would be doing, and exactly what the Downtown East Side needs. It doesn`t need more money, more programs or more handouts: it needs a dose of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel, straight-no-chaser, to bring the hope people need to keep moving forward and turn their lives around -- for His name's sake.

Gospel Mission is an Ark in another way: like Noah's Ark. Years ago, God showed me that there would be Revival on the Downtown East Side with the Holy Spirit coming in like a flood, rising up and catching people unawares in its tide. The Cross would be the Ark for people to grab onto to avoid being swept away and drowned, and so long as Gospel Mission puts the Cross and all It represents first -- God, Jesus, Redemption, Forgiveness, Grace -- people will find the refuge and the hope they need there. With the manifestation now of God's power, going with His provision and purpose, we're seeing the two types of "ark" melding into one.

From The Lord's Rain: The Wedding Miracle

On the face of it, this miracle has nothing to do with water and wine, and everything to do with the fact that the wedding happened at all. This past Saturday (May 9), Janet Klassen, the Assistant Pastor at Gospel Mission with responsibility for The Lord’s Rain, married Kim Mogenson, who has been around the Mission in one way or another for at least as long as I’ve been there – 8 years, now.

I’ve written about Janet before, the struggles she’s gone through and her victories. Just before Barry Babcook passed away unexpectedly, we learned that she and Kim had become an “item”. General reaction: "al-RIGHT!" (and various other cheers and unbroken Hallelujahs).

Yes: what did happen to that guy?

Kim has often asked the rhetorical question, “Whatever happened to the man who used to wait outside and then come in between ‘Amen’ and ‘Pass the food’?” 

Actually, it’s a pretty good question. I first met Kim in 2004 at Rainbow Mission: drunk, sometimes spaced-out on something else, obnoxious – the kind that would make you cringe. And indeed, because we didn’t lock the door at Rainbow once the service started, people would arrive just in time to miss the message and get to the “important part”.

But a few weeks after John, Danilo, Amelia and I moved to Gospel Mission, Kim showed up, flashed a grin, and said, “You tried to get away from me, eh?” And something was different. He started bringing a Bible to the Saturday night services. He started asking questions about the Bible before, after – and sometimes, during – the sermon. One night, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen and told Amelia, “I’m going to turn my life around.”

We learned that he had been a chef, working at a restaurant in Port Renfrew. For whatever reason – and they are usually legion – his life fell apart: chronic health issues, drugs, booze, all lined up against him and he wound up on the Downtown East Side.

Pastor David Brown, Kim and best man Justin, awaiting the grand entrance

As I write this, I’m hearing Brian Houston of Hillsong Church, telling us that God has a special purpose for every one of us. I get the feeling that Kim was able to regain that sense, not quite sure how it would manifest itself, but it was there, and would become apparent, so long as he kept turning towards the Lord.

Kim would sometimes get up and share something he’d read or observed. One day, he came up to me before a service and said, “I think I’m ready to give the sermon.” The next Saturday night, he took the mike and spoke about the need for us to be salt and light in the world, illustrating it with his own experience as a chef.

While this was going on, he took courses at FreeGeek, which provides IT training for people on the Downtown East Side; he joined a guitar class at the Carnegie Centre; he got more and more involved with the Mission. When Janet was shattered by Barry’s unexpected passing, Kim became her support and also her buffer, the initial point of contact when the rest of us had questions about the running of the Ministry. Others, like Pastor David Brown and Liane Hyatt, the Mission’s treasurer, took on a lot of the load, and Kim was the rock Janet needed to lean on.

So this past Saturday, there was a sense of the climactic ending to one chapter and the bright, hopeful beginning of a promising new one. Watching Janet walk down the aisle on her dad’s arm, in her magnificent white dress, it suddenly struck a lot of us how huge this occasion was. She read her personalized vow to Kim, and there was not a dry eye in the house. Tears, laughter, love, and you knew that God was watching over it all, seeing this raw, obvious example of how He had made it all happen.

In fact, you don't have to stretch too far to see that this is a "water-into-wine" miracle, do you?

**

The seventh anniversary of the opening of The Lord’s Rain came and went with little fanfare, but it’s important to note that we have now passed the 8500-mark in the number of showers taken since we opened. On Tuesday, 25 people came in to get cleaned up, and one has to wonder where they would have gone and what they would have done if The Lord’s Rain hadn't been there. I've been reviewing the history of the building of The Lord’s Rain, and have a hard time believing that we took the dilapidated, rat-infested space and, beginning with a vision but no money, built this facility that meets a basic, and vital, human need.

But we did -- and not by any strength of our own. The people, the finances, the supplies, all came together exactly as and when they were needed, as God made it clear that the project was going to go ahead, no matter what the worldly evidence might say. If you ever want a “wow!” experience, consider the fact that you've been involved with this in one way or another. There are more people than I could count, who are grateful for your support.

(If you would like to contribute to The Lord's Rain, you can send your cheque or money order to Gospel Mission Society, PO Box 98802, The W PO, Vancouver, BC V6B 0G0. The Lord's Rain can always use more volunteer help, too: please contact me through the "contact/comment" box for more information.)