We wake up at 9am and get ready to leave. Chris offers us mouth wash. I’ve never seen any men get as excited about hygiene as we were when we realized we got to use mouthwash. He also offers us the frisbee. On the way out Kurt (he’s out of college and kinda the head of operations at the Decomm House) offers us the house as a “base of operations.” We rejoice in the fact that we have a secure place to stay each night and we leave to make the 45 minute walk to the shelters.
We go by Sunday Breakfast for lunch. Here’s how it works; they offer three meals a day and before lunch and dinner there’s a sermon. We have to sit through 3 of these sermons in all. We are all in shock at the terrible theology, out of context scripture, and just downright piss-poor [unacceptable] presentation of the gospel given by… every “preacher” we hear at these meetings. It’s frustrating. One of the preachers was even homeless himself once, and all he had to present to the fifty men sitting in the room was a terribly communicated presentation of the prosperity gospel.
Despite their terrible teaching and the harm that may be done through that, it is apparent that the people at Sunday Breakfast are trying to serve the homeless community. We ask if we can volunteer to help them in some way and they tell us they will have work for us tomorrow. We go by The Chosen 300 and volunteer our services there too and they also tell us they will have work for us tomorrow.
We walk back into the downtown area Wes decides he wants doughnuts again, so we go back by DD, but they haven’t thrown anything out. So Wes picks up some of the doughnuts from the day before… the ones on the ground… behind the dumpster… that got rained on the night before. No one else touches them… except Vic who is persuaded into taking a bite. Steve and I remark on how impractical this is.
Vic, Steve, and Wes spot a sign saying “DONATE BLOOD, $20″ They get over excited and run with reckless abandon into the building in a manner that makes me think they would sell their kidneys for fifty bucks. They are turned away because only Philadelphia residents can donate.
Photo from http://www.freewebs.com/themeades/
It’s a nice day, so we decide to head into the city, hang out, and see what opportunities God brings up. We decide to lounge around the Plaza around the Municipal Services Building where there is a concrete flat with tons of game pieces like chess pawns, dominoes, and Sorry and Monopoly figures. We take a seat on a giant checker and lay in the sun. The guys throw the frisbee around while I sit down and talk to a womanizing man who talks about how Obama has made it easy for him lie and get hundreds of dollars in disability and food stamps.
After a while I join the guys trowing the disc. A man walks up and asks if he can throw with us. His name is Tom, he has his wife and two twin baby boys in a stroller with him. He joins in, cigarette in one hand, throwing with the other. After a while he asks Steve “do you guys smoke pot?” When Steve replies with a no he immediately states, “oh, then you guys are Christians.” Steve uses the opportunity to open up a few doors and tell him why we’re in the city. After hanging out with him for about an hour he insists that he wants to buy us some food with his food stamps. We argue that he doesn’t need to for about ten minutes but eventually he and his family leave and he tells us to wait where we are because he will be back.
As we sit down, pray, and wait for Tom to return we meet our first apparent bout with spiritual warfare. It comes in a crazy, sixty-something year old black lady named Barbara. She approaches us and begins talking about who knows what. She takes a quick liking to Wesley and makes awkward physical advances on him that are both troubling and hysterical.
After about an hour, Tom returns with some food. Then things heat up. Crazy Barbara becomes loud and insane and Tom tries to be calm but is also being very protective of his boys and increasingly verbally aggressive towards Crazy Barbara. Finally we all agree to pray. Tom asks us to share something from the Word. So Wes begins to read from 2 Corinthians 5:
Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ.”
Silence falls over everyone. Tom stares at Wes. There’s something in his eyes. Then the best two lines we heard on our whole trip are spoken.
“Can you read that again?”
Wes does.
“Can you explain that to me?”
We all sit down and Wes begins to walk through God’s plan with Tom and his family.
And the Crazy Barbara becomes insane.
Looking back, this may quite possibly have been demon possession, it was definitely the act of Satan trying to interfere with the Gospel. She is yelling indistinguishably and becoming paranoid about all her surroundings. Vic and I quickly diagnose the situation. Barbara = bad. We have to get her away from Tom and his kids. So Vic and I seclude Insane Barbara and walk her away from where Steve and Wes are walking Tom through the idea of sin and redemption. I would like to be over there with them. But I learn a very important lesson dealing with Insane Barbara: as a minister of the Gospel, dealing with the wolves is just as important as tending to the sheep.
After Wes and Steve are done we pray and we walk away from Insane Barbara with Tom and his family at a brisk pace. We trade phone numbers and agree to call him tomorrow. We go to Sunday Breakfast, listened to some more terrible “preaching” and fellowshiped with our brothers. Some of the guys asked us where we had been staying, when we told them we had been staying on a college campus, Bill thought it was hilarious. He was happy for us but acknowledged that it was nice to be young because he could never pull it off. Walt became angry and told us we had lost our credibility. The topic of whether Walt was right or not became a topic of debate between the four of us for the rest of the week. Afterward we walked back to Temple University, hung out in the abandoned student center, talked theology, and pretty much ministered to each other for a couple of ours.
We decided to walk the town a little more. We were walking back towards the house when we spotted a MacDonalds. We thought it would be a good idea to check the drive through for change… cause you know, when you drop change in the drive through, you’re too lazy to pick it up. As we were about to go fish for pennies a car full of girls drives up and goes into the McDees. We try to convince Wes that if he’ll work some charm, he could get us all double cheeseburgers for free. He refuses, we argue for 10 minutes and finally decide to walk away. As we are leaving I decide you only live (homeless) once (hopefully) so I’m just gonna go beg for food. Steve accompanies me and we go in and strike up and conversation with the group of girls. They are all 23 year old Drexel students, they’re quite friendly and interested in what we’re doing. After a while Vic and Wes (the cowards) come in and sit down. We tell them our story and talk to them for about 15 minutes. As we get up to leave, one of them, Alycia, tells us to take $20 dollars.
I refuse. she insists. Wes says “offer twice.” She does. We get $20.
We walk back to the Decomm House wondering what to do with the money. We decide we’ll spend it tomorrow on Bill somehow. We get back and I watch the end of Lost with Adam. We stay up talking for a while. We go to bed. It was a good day.
