We
arrived in Santa Cruz from San Jose mid-afternoon in time to meet Ron Scandina,
a friend of Ryan’s (from San Jose). Ron has a TV and Radio show in the Santa
Cruz area called "Santa Cruz Revival" on CTV Santa Cruz. Ron does a street homeless
ministry every Thursday evening in downtown Santa Cruz. I got there and
he welcomed me like he’d known me forever.
He
was already set up, had his chess boards out and the food was out. The
homeless know they can go there every Thursday for food and chess. Yep.
That's right. I said "chess." You really just never
know what you're going to run into out here on the streets.
Here
we were in this quiet little picturesque downtown area; and there, right on
the main street in front of some really nice stores, were a bunch of homeless
people playing chess!
The
thing that struck me most about Santa Cruz was that it was what I would call a
"hippie town." Heck, even their homeless were hippies!
Kathy
and I helped give out food, and I prayed for those who wanted prayer (and
silently prayed for those that didn’t.) It was so funny watching people
going into the nice stores in front of us. Some of them almost ran into
the glass as they were looking at what was going on! Like I said, you
never know what you're going to run into! HA!
I
met a couple, Mark and Kelly, from Wisconsin. They left Wisconsin in a car with
all their stuff, but the car broke down and they didn’t have the money to fix
it, so they left it and took what they could carry in their back packs. I
couldn’t believe Kelly, about as big as a mustard seed, with a big ole'
backpack on her back and one on the front. I watched her try to get the
backpacks on, and I said “Girl you got to get rid of some of that stuff” and
she said “this is all I have left now. I’ve already left so much.”
She
sure was happy though because she told me that after being in Santa Cruz for
the last 3 months, a local church was getting them a one way ticket back home,
and they were leaving the next day. I gave her some more sandwiches for
the trip. We prayed for them to get home safe and to have peace and not
to worry because God’s “got it.”
It was just a short visit to Santa Cruz, but it
was so beautiful. So we got a good night's sleep and hit the road
time for San Francisco.
Sammie
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