Kaleo San Diego Church

It’s been about 24 hours and I don’t even know where to begin.  Our first surprise came last night as Aaron and I waited for the bus to take us to the spot where we were going to spend the night with Chris.  One of the homeless men we knew found out we were going to be spending the week on the streets and he immediately began warning us that it was spider season and many people were being bitten by Brown Recluses.  He went on to describe what to avoid.  Avoid sleeping on the grass, under a tree, or near trashcans.  That sure seemed to limit where people could spend the night.  It was about this time that some of the gravity of the situation began to sink in.  I know I really didn’t want to end up with a spider bite.  Next we found out that Chris, our homeless tour guide who was going to be showing us the ropes had been given a hotel room for the night so basically we were on our own.  He told us he would meet us and show us where to put our sleeping bags and then he was off to his hotel.  I was struck by the irony that for the last year I had dropped him off on Friday nights and went back to my own home while tonight he was dropping me off and going to a hotel.  Chris went on to show us a slab of concrete 3 feet wide by 7 feet long butted up against a building and surrounded on three sides by trashcans.  The trashcans proved helpful to keep people on the road from seeing us but I was a little disheartened because of the previous spider talk.  Seven feet was also not quite long enough for both Aaron and I so it turned out that my feet hung over onto the dirt by the trashcans.  Lastly, there was an overhang above us that served to keep the place dry when it rained but it also had two floodlights that shown directly into our eyes. 

Basically it was a rough night.  The ground was really hard, our hands and arms kept falling asleep, the light was seriously bright and I couldn’t figure out what to do.  I slept with a ski mask over my face and still I couldn’t get the light out of my eyes.  And then all I could think the whole time was what if the police find us and I wake up and sit up and they shine their flashlight on me and see I am wearing a ski mask.  That couldn’t be good.  I fell asleep twice that I can remember and each time I woke with a start because I was dreaming that someone discovered us.  Every noise we were sure was someone coming.  There is a fire station across the street and they kept starting their engines, the sprinklers in the grass about three feet from us kept going off and the only thing protecting us was the massive trashcans that we had surrounded ourselves with.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, 5:45am. rolled around and we got up to pack our stuff.  The preschool teachers begin to show up at 6am and I didn’t want them to find me there with my ski mask on.  As we got ready to leave there were parents and their kids already out front and it looked like there was some type of field trip.  It was really scary but we simply walked by making sure we avoided eye contact and hoped they didn’t know we were sleeping in their backyard.  Chris later told us that they are there early every Tuesday and he didn’t think they cared so that made us feel better.       I have always prided myself as a person who could sleep anywhere and make do with anything and I am hoping that tonight I can adapt better, but I can honestly say last night was very rough.         

Good encounters

As rough as last night was today was a day of good encounters.  One of the sweetest things Aaron and I found was that when we didn’t have an agenda we were able to learn so much more about our friends.  We spent a while just sitting with Jesse and his friend Jose.  At one point Jesse and Jose were speaking in Spanish for a while and then Jesse looked over to me and said, “We are talking about how Jesus was perfect and never should have had to die and yet he did.  We can’t believe that he died for us.”  There are few things in my mind more beautiful than watching people respond to the Gospel with wonder.  As we watched Jessie marveling at God’s grace toward his people it reminded us again of how the Gospel ought to effect all of us. 

Later we made our way through the 97degree heat to the library which was a few miles away.  We sat there for a while and just listened to stories, enjoyed a lot of laughter and argued about whether or not one of the homeless guys could retire after 5 years if he could just get his truck driving license.  After listening for a while we asked if anyone would like to hear a story about our amazing God.  About half the group stayed and the other half went right behind me and kept chatting.  It was sweet to begin with creation and tell stories of how amazing our God is and all that he has done for his people.  Aaron says some of the guys who were behind us were actually listening even though they were pretending to be disinterested.  We even caught one of them answering one of the questions.  It was definitely an interesting environment.  A few minutes into creation a woman came barging into the circle using the F word over and over again and yelling at her boyfriend who was trying to listen to the story.  Later, when it was over I got a chance to talk to her.  They had gotten in a fight earlier and she was so mad that she had gone to an anger management class for the last two hours.  Obviously she said it had not worked.  I am looking forward to more opportunities to work with her and her boyfriend throughout this week.  Both of them have been to church a number of times and are great need of our amazing Savior.

Dreading the Night. 

It has been a really long day and I am seriously tired.  I told Abbey when I spoke to her earlier about how during my normal work week when I get really tired and overwhelmed I look forward to the evening coming and getting to relax and finally go to bed.  Sometimes if I need some motivation I will even think of how amazing my bed is going to feel as I try and push through some meetings.  However, this week is different.  I am really tired but I am not looking forward to the night.  As soon as I finish posting this I will walk outside again and take my sleeping bag and put it on some hard concrete with a bright light, sprinklers and ambulances interrupting my dreams of people finding us and getting us in trouble.  It is so weird that after a really hard and long day when I am very tired I am dreading the night.

Gratitude

So, even though I am dreading going back outside and experiencing another long night I feel overwhelmed at the goodness of my God.  I feel overwhelmed at just how good my God has been to me.  I have a wife, a home, a family, a church that loves me and encourages me, and most of all I have a Savior.  I have a Savior who knows what it is like to be homeless for he left his home in heaven to take on flesh.  I also have a Savior who knows what it is like to dread the night as he asked his Father “if there is any way please, take this cup from me.”  Oh what a terrible night it must have been for our Savior to dread it so.  In fact, the Bible tells us, that it was our night.  It was the night that we deserved to endure for all eternity because of our sin and rebellion against God.  An eternal, painful, lonely night, but our precious savior bore it for me.  My savior bore my night.  As long as tonight feels, as uncomfortable as it may be, I am so thankful that my precious Savior shed his blood on the cross so that it would end.  Our Savior has shed his blood so that all our nights no matter how long they may have lasted will one day come to an end.  And our God will dwell with us and we will be his people and he will be our God.  And there will be no more night.