It's Tuesday and we are actually in Tucson, Arizona. As we have suffered much in the way of technology, both from equipment failure and user failure, we are behind in our storytelling! So for our time in El Paso, we have condensed (and I use the word lightly) our stories into just one post. It's a long one, but so worth your read.
We drove all day and arrived in
El Paso early evening on January 23rd, and met
our hostess, Isabel, for the 1st time. What a gracious lady. (That's her to the left!) A friend from our small group back home lined us
up with her, and we are so thankful. She was a perfect hostess for our time there.
Wednesday morning we had to catch
up on paper and media work to send back home.
We’d had yet another malfunction with our equipment (just reminding us
that the enemy is trying to keep us from doing this because it’s going to bring
praise to God); but we visited with a new
group of techies and now we’re back on track. I feel like maybe we should add a separate weekly story about our techie friends!
I made some calls to try to reconnect with sources we’d spoken to before
to try to set up appointments, one of which was the Rescue Mission of El Paso.
The Rescue Mission of El Paso was a great place, and as we showed up to volunteer and took the "grand tour" we realized the entire place was under expansion and renovation. The Rescue mission houses both men and women. They can house as many as 50 men and 25 women, but when the total reconstruction is finished, they will have a capacity of 250.
On our tour, we were introduced to Chef Bill, the head cook. He cooks at the mission, showing up at 3 a.m. each morning, something he's done for the past 14 years. “We serve breakfast, lunch and supper. Everyone is welcome here. We want everyone to
have a hot meal. We have a philosophy
here: Everyone is equal here but we have
some rules.”
Bill has 2 other cooks under him that are staff members, as well as other volunteers and those sent by court to assist. Each day they serve about 150 "guests and clients," as they say, and around 200 on a cold day.
Bill came there as a client
himself, worked as a volunteer, went to culinary school and ended up on
staff. He had an alcohol problem and was
homeless himself. He was “reborn” in
1989. “Some people are Christians but
they don’t have it here” (pointing at his heart.) “It takes something big for people to open their eyes, and I thank God, He
opened my eyes and saved me.” Bill said if it had not been for the mission he
would not have made it. He still lives at the mission and is “giving
back.”
Bill loves his work at Rescue Mission El Paso and left us with this word. “Just because this is a shelter, it doesn’t mean we are homeless. We all
think we are family here.”
Once our time with Chef Bill was over, we went to visit the Chaplin, Rev. Julius O. Martin. Reverend Martin has such great stories! (We could have listened to him all day but we
only had an hour before we were to report to the kitchen for meal serving!) Though a staff member at the mission for only nine years, Reverend Martin is a 40 year veteran of the ministry.
He grew up in Montana but has
lived numerous places including Germany, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. He explained he also teaches classes to young
families concerning child rearing and child development skills. He tells them they must be consistent on
discipline. He told us a story on his wife .She was feeling like the kids didn’t listen to her until she yelled at them, but wondered why he didn't have to that. He told her it was because they knew he meant
what he said and they would suffer the consequences if they did not respond in
the proper manner. He told us how he
tells the young parents that if they are consistent, just one day on their
discipline, it will work. The reason he thinks it is so important to
train your children, while they are young, to be respectful to rules and your
elders is because “many of the adult people at the Mission that I minister to
are just now learning and understanding there are consequences for all their
actions. You have to take responsibility
for yourself. It’s best if taught to
you as a child." Good words.
The Pastor told us that they make
furniture there and ship it all over.
They ship it to camps and missions.
They’ve even shipped a load of bunk beds to Jamaica. This mission is a member of the AGRM.org, an
association of independent missions across America. (We are learning so much on this journey!)
It was then time to go to the
kitchen. I wanted to help serve, but also
wanted to talk to some of the homeless people there. We served an estimated 50 persons. By the time we finished serving and went to
the dining room, most of them were gone.
However, there were still a few there, so I went to a table and sat down while waiting for Kathy to come. The gentleman sitting close by said “Hey, I
have some barbacoa if you’d like to have some.”
I picked up my bowl of beans and joined his table. He introduced himself as Adam. I was thinking “How awesome I get to hear
someone’s story that lives at this mission."
Adam told us how his friend George and fellow resident had helped him
when he’d been so sick. George had
arrived at the mission just a week after Adam, and they have been good
friends ever since. He said he didn’t know what he
would have done without George through that hard time.
Recently Adam's cancer specialist said that if
she hadn’t seen all his blood work before now, she wouldn't believe he'd ever had cancer. Adam said, "I told her that God cured
me, and he did”. He said the mission had
done so much for him and he loved being there.
While we were in the kitchen
serving, two people walked through. The
gentleman introduced himself as Pastor David Dutton, and introduced his wife, Angie. He told us how he did Bible Study
classes at the mission and invited us back at 6:30 that night for his class.
We got
back a little early and went to the kitchen.
We saw about 20 kids from the local Catholic church helping serve food
and clean up. These kids were all in
high school. It was nice to see this age
group being so active with the homeless.
I spoke to one of the mothers that was there, and we told her what we
were doing and she said she’d pray for us.
About that time, Pastor Dave and Angie got there.
We followed them to the chapel and began
study. It was an awesome study on
Revelation 18. He was such a
teacher! He spoke so slowly and clearly, and
he was so humbled by the Lord. He passed
out handouts on the class, and I was thankful because it was some really good
verses with a place to write down notes on the verse. He’s an awesome teacher and full of the Holy
Spirit. You could see it on his and his
wife’s face. The class members were a mixture
of homeless people living at the mission and others that were former homeless
that come back for the class. You could
tell they all loved Pastor Dave and Angie.
It was one of those moments when you are sitting in a service, and you feel like the pastor is speaking directly to you. He spoke about how we have to be warriors for
Christ and teach the Gospel and how ONE person can make a difference. As I was listening to
him, tears started rolling down my cheeks.
I looked at Kathy, and she had tears too.
I knew right then and there it was another confirmation that we were in
God’s will and doing what he wanted us to do.
We all prayed together and then broke class but not before I asked
Pastor Dave if I could meet up with him the next day. He knew by looking at me that his words had really struck my heart, as I am not bashful to cry. I explained to him how his words were such an
encouragement to me, and I wanted to hear his story.
I think the most surprising thing to me was that Pastor Dave has only been a Christian for 12 years. "What life changing event caused you to surrender your life to God?" He said, “well, that’s a long story
but…”
Pastor Dave, the oldest of three children, left home when he was 17 to go
into the military, and he never went back home to live again. When he got out of his 20 year service, he
was then in civil service for 25 years before “retiring.” He’d become an alcoholic when he was in the
military and remained one for 30 years.
He had gone home to take care of his parents, and knew the Lord was working on him. He
went to sleep one night and had a dream and the Lord said “If you don’t come to
me and surrender to me, Hell will be your home.” The vision he had at that time
was so clear that he saw himself there at
the gates of Hell, and when he woke he had been sweating so much you could see
the outline of his body in the bed. He
asked his wife if she wanted to go to church on Sunday and she looked like a
deer in the headlights. She couldn’t
believe what he was saying. At church that
Sunday, it was like everything the Pastor said hit him in the chest. When the Pastor invited those there to come to the front of the church if they wanted to surrender the hearts to Christ, he was up there
right away. He came to Christ that day and
felt the weight of the world come off his shoulders.
But the "real" story is what God did with
him after that day. God told him He
wanted him to be a preacher and he said “Oh God, please, not me! As mean and ugly as I’ve been and away from
you for so long, why would You want someone like me to represent You?” He went on to Bible school for 3 years and then went to Hillside Baptist Church. While there, he
had a pastor ask him to go into the prison ministry, where he ended up serving for 5 years. He was way out of his comfort zone but the
Lord opened doors for him and showed him how, even in the worst situations, God
is there for you. After that he went to
Gospel Rescue Mission of El Paso, and is still there today.
The one thing I didn't share with you is that Pastor Dave is sick. His wife, Angie, shared with us that God had cured her of MS, but that recently they found a spot on Pastor Dave's lung. At times his breathing was so labored that we would stop so I could pray for him to be able to continue. We had a special prayer time over him, asking God for healing, but also for peace for Dave and Angie as they awaited test results.
Missions like Rescue Mission of El Paso are doing such incredible work for the homeless and those in need. Their staff members and volunteers (some of them residents themselves) offer such hope to the people they serve. If you live in the El Paso area, please be sure to volunteer with this incredible place!
As for Kathy and I, please continue to pray for us, message us through Facebook or the website, and as God leads you, donate. Your prayers, your encouragement and your donations keep us going.
Sammie
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