Mr. Noodles on Friday.. three course meal on Sunday
Update on my double life... this is most difficult part of my week. I had this crazy time on outreach on Friday night meeting with some of the cities most broken and hungry people. Today however- I was wined and dined ( I didn't drink wine ;))... two forks, two spoons, three courses.. three drinks, as part of a welcoming and get to know you lunch for Pam and myself at St. Mary's. The conversation was ridiculous.. and the whole time I thought about how so many people have nothing. I think this is something I'm going to have to learn to deal with.. meeting with all kinds of people, and engaging myself in all kinds of conversation. This is real training.
I got to try something new tonight. There's a ministry in town called Cart's. It's run by two sisters and they have like five huge wagons and a bunch of carts. Every Friday night the two sisters and about ten volunteers gather in a parking lot and load the wagons up with sandwhiches, hot chocolate, juice, fruit, blankets, socks, yoguart and whatever else happens to be donated and then they hit the streets. It's an awesome sight to see, a train of wagons and people giving out food to homeless people. They have a specific route that they take every week and most people will try and be at a certain location at a certain time so they don't miss out. We hit up the needle exchange (heroin addicts), streetlink (an emergency shelter), the train station (where quite a few people sleep), and other busy streets. It was huge for me to see the difference between day time street life and night time street life. This is only the second night I'd been downtown after five o'clock. I saw one of the frequent shoebox streetkids passed out on the street. The medics were standing beside trying to ask him questions while they waited for the paddy wagon. I stopped and chatted and told them his name. They asked about medical conditions and if I knew his drug preference. I don't know what his deal was.. but needless to say it'll be a few days before I see my friend D_____ again. So yeah.. night time is crazy, Carts was fun, I got to call 911 twice. We witnessed a street brawl, one kid jumped another and then started smashing him with his skateboard. He got arrested. Turned the corner, was talking to a homeless man and he started to have a seizure.. good times. He was drunk and diabetic. Woooooooo
God is totally ruining me. I constantly smell pot, my hands always feel dirty...but yet I am super broken. I was watching this man seizure on the street tonight- Two of the people sat with him while I talked to 911 and then the man started to cry...dang it! My heart broke. This man is like 60, addicted to probably everything going, has had a miserable life and I'm watching him seize on the street...Oh God, couldn't you change this man's life?!
I read Jackie Pullinger's "Chasing the Dragon" the whole way home and cried between chapters... how the heck do I bring hope to such a broken, miserable world?
Friday's
Friday's are definitley my favorite day of the week...and not because it's the end of the week. Rick comes to the shoebox on Friday's and we do that scene and then we usually meet up with Rick's friend Dez and walk around downtown together. Nothing "unusal" happened today. I had my first encounter with a vulgar, sexually agressive homeless man. That was interesting. The funny part was that the rest of the street kids around me were telling him to get lost and leave me alone.
So yeah Friday's...my favorite day.. at around two o'clock a couple of cars showed up at the shoebox.. we had around fifty shoeboxes donated today! I guess churches decided it was getting cold and felt bad for the street kids and decided to do something! Thank you Church!
Moral crisis of the day
Sooo I'm still pretty new to Victoria. It's getting towards the end of the month and word on the street has it you need to get your bus pass for the next month as early as you can. So I went to the Thrifty's grocery store today, my billet told me to ask for a "two zone bus pass." Got it covered. Done. The lady asks, "Are you a student?" Of course I am. I got a student loan to prove it. So I pay the lady (noting that the price seemed a little cheaper then last month) and went on my way. I started to read the back of the card... it's for "students" ages 18 and under...dang. I'm appreciative that she thinks I look eighteen however what do I do now? I compared the card to this months ( which cost me $30 more) and is the real big girl bus pass...urgh
Street 101
snowball- cocaine and heroin mixed together
squat- a place where a homeless person stays from night to night (abandoned warehouse, to someone's couch etc)
hooped- done in for
farmed- stolen
A-bomb- marijuana cigarette with heroin
a breath of fresh air..
I need a retreat from the city. Too many drugs, so much chaos, swearing, homelessness, dirt, flith and swearing.
Take me to the country...
This one is for you Adam
Summer camping trip with the LDP's...mmmmm beans
Found this picture from the summer on Mallory's msn myspace. I didn't know it exsisted. Haha..
Does anyone else hear better with the light on?
The up's and down's
My ministry has bipolar disorder (hope no one is seriously offended by that). I'm living in two worlds. On the one hand we have StreetHope, a ministry to homeless youth and teens. It's unpredictable, it's different every day. Some days are boring and dull, other days you get sworn at. I see all kinds of crazy things (people shooting up, very addicted people, beggers, arrests, etc). I also get to see how God moves in and through all this crazy chaos and it's been really awesome thus far!
On the flip side I'm teaching Sunday School and helping out with a youth group at your run of the mill Anglican Church. There's like ten people under the age of sixty and it's BCP sung communion pretty much every Sunday.
The hilarious thing is- both of these things are an incredible stretch for me. I didn't know much about street culture or how to minister to street kids before I got here (still learning).. so each day has definetly been a new adventure. I've had a lot of frustration in the past with the Anglican Church, so I'm really learning patience, and learning how to listen.
Sometimes I feel like I meet with God more on the streets, in the people I meet and in the experiences we share together- instead of in the church. This makes me sad. But I guess in hindsight we are the Church!
I am feeling much better! The antibiotics are clearing up ear/throat infections. Blood test came back...I have mono.
Feeling good though.
I lied... the top picture is downtown.. the bottom one is like a five minute bike ride from my house in Saanichton
downtown pictures
the water is on the other side of a fence... bah... I will have to cross the highway and investigate the shore line someday!
The Vision
Trapped in my bed sick I've been doing a lot of reading- I'm reading "Red Moon Rising"...can't think who it's by right now. It's about how the 24/7 prayer movement was established. The guy that wrote the book (Pete something) had a vision about an army of young people that would rise up to pray and he wrote a poem about it. I think Jordan had shared this with me before, but it's really powerful.
The Vision - by Pete Greig
So this guy comes up to me and says:
“what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open my mouth and words come out like this:
The vision?
The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.The vision is an
army of young people.
You see bones? I see an army.
And they are
FREE from materialism.
They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers choose to loose,
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.
Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground
And the army is discipl(in)ed.
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “
for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them ?Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them ?
And the generation prays
like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules.
Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractiveInside.On the outside? They hardly care.
They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.
With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don’t you hear them coming?Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes.
They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.
Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.
And this vision will be.It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.How do I know?
Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.
My tomorrow is his today.
My distant hope is his 3D.
And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.
I'm a walking health time bomb
one month... the boring version...probably with lots of spelling mistakes
wow.. I've been here exactly one month ! I figured it was time to tell y'all how I'm doing and what I'm doing etc. Hmmm... Well my days are mostly the same. After three weeks of crazy insomnia I FINALLY adjusted my sleep so that I am going to bed at a reasonable hour, sleeping through the WHOLE night and getting up at a reasonable hour. Woop Woop. In the mornings I usually do school work. I have lots of favorite locations where I love to work...sometimes I like to go to the park and lay in the sun to read... especially my Early Church History text book (because I don't really understand it, and chances are I'll probably fall asleep at the park). When I have to listen to lectures I go downtown where I can get wireless or sometimes I stay home. I haven't figured out yet where I'm going to find a nice quiet place to write essays... that will be next weeks investigation! I don't do much else in the mornings (pretty boring life eh?)- I had been going to physio three mornings a week, but now I'm a physio graduate...somehow I'm not a backpain graduate..go figure?
At noon I catch the bus downtown. I really enjoy riding the bus. When I lived in Saint John I absolutley hated it! I would get sick to my stomach and would have to sit in the front seat. I find my bus rides are like the quiet times of the day... life is sooo busy here.. people are always rushing here, but the bus is quiet. I can think, or read and sometimes clear my head space to pray. So that's a good chunk of an hour. From 1 until 2:30 I hang out at the shoebox place where we give out shoeboxes full of food to the street kids that come by. There's regulars so I've gotten to know quite a few of them and they usually come to stay for the full hour and a half. Usually from three until 4:30ish I go downtown to give out food or hang out with kids..whatever God has in store. It's different everyday. Then I catch the bus home. I'm going to be teaching Sunday School and co-ordinating a youth group at a church here so I imagine my evenings will be spent focused on that- I also joined an evening bible study. I hope to get out and maybe see some tourist type things maybe this month. I'm definitley settled...getting to know some people.. it's not home, but the west coast is a good place.
Billy Gramham Crusade..
Couldn't get any really great pictures. This is the best I could do. The Save-On- Foods area was packed out..it was probably the equivalent of Harbor station (maybe bigger) for all you maritimers. Salvador was musically good, I'm choosing not to comment about Joy Williams and I loved Tree63! Will Gramham presented the gospel (very old fashioned- probably one of his grandfathers sermons..haha) and kids responded! It was great to see the Church of Victoria gathered together and get behind something..woop.
This is for my mum!
Here ya go mum... hope you can sleep at night now...
Whale Wall
This is called the "Whale Wall." It's right on the water and it's where a lot of the street kids hang out. At any given time you can find between five and thirty kids hanging out. I usually come down here a couple times a week to hang out or bring food.
pray for my back...the car accident was almost two months ago, I'm finished physio but still uncomfortable a lot. I don't want to be 25 and have serious back problems. Thanks Church.
Street Terminology...lesson number one
I'm not very "in tune" with street culture so I've decided that as I learn new phrases and lingo I will share them with all those in blog land.
Today's word is pretty self-explainatory...
"shooting gallery"Outreach workers and street kids refer to lots of places as "shooting galleries." These are the places were you will find
a lot of people shooting up at once. The streethope shoebox place is located right beside an Anglican church- the church had to remove it's fence because a lot of people were gathering there to shoot up because you couldn't be seen from the street.. it was quite the "shooting gallery."
More street 101 later.. haha
some common misconceptions about me and New Brunswick
- Fredericton is in Nova Scotia
- by coming from "out east" I must "mean" Ontario
- I
must be 100% bilingual
- A lot of people have mentioned that I have an accent.. my favorite comment was " I can tell you're from out east, you have that Quebec accent"....I've been to Quebec like four times in my entire life
