The Dream Center

The Los Angeles Dream Center has been our home since Thursday. This place is absolutely awesome. My experiences during our short visit here have been incredible. I really don’t like the thought of leaving this place.

The Dream Center is a volunteer driven organization dedicated to serving people in L.A. It is essentially a very active church that never sleeps—seemingly never even takes a break. The number of projects, ministries, events, and programs here is immense… you’d really have to check out there website to get a sense of what all goes on here.

http://www.dreamcenter.org/about-us/

When we arrived here we were immediately hooked up with the mobile-food bank ministry. We went to work alongside Cassie, George, Daniel, and Mike. After the trucks were loaded, we headed out to south central L.A. to distribute the food—the other trucks went out to various neighborhoods around the city. A crowd of smiling, grateful faces greeted us as we arrived at the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts. We were able to send a lot of people home with food and meet some great folks. I’m not a city boy, so I’m not used to seeing places like that. I won’t lie; I was a bit intimidated at first. It didn’t take long to be reminded that people are good—anywhere and everywhere you go.

Skid Row is an area in downtown L.A. with one of the largest homeless populations in the United States. The dream center has several ministries and projects focused in this part of downtown. On Thursday night, Derek and I found ourselves on a bus headed for Skid Row. I had heard of the place before, but honestly had no idea what to expect. The bus headed down there with just a few other people—it was nearly empty because we had the intentions of taking people back with us. The Dream Center holds a church service on Thursday nights—we were hoping some people would want to get off the streets for a while and join us at church. Mainly, we just wanted to show love to the people out there—let them know that somebody cared. Like I said earlier, I’m not a city boy—it was pretty shocking for me to walk out of that bus in Skid Row. The streets were packed with people, but unlike typical city streets, the people didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. Everyone was there to stay—people sleeping on the sidewalks, milling about, sitting in lawn chairs, talking with each other, talking with themselves, staring blankly—shopping carts filled with possessions, tents, tarp shelters, garbage, filth—booze, crack, heroin, and who-knows what else… that was the scene. It was downright scary for the first couple minutes—until I began talking with people. A lot of the men I met were sincerely happy to have a conversation with me and just seemed grateful to be treated like a person, not just a fixture on the sidewalk. Not everyone—some people didn’t want anything to do with me, but they have a good way of letting you know that right off the bat. My experience at Skid Row was unforgettable—I'll always remember my interactions with Miles and Antonio and Earnie and Stan. I really didn’t know there were places like that right here in this country. My heart broke for those people and it sure put a lot of things in perspective—made me more appreciative of the life I’ve been blessed to live and more motivated to help the people on the other end of the spectrum.

Since that first night on Skid Row I have been back three times. I’ve had the opportunity to get out into the community a lot and meet some really wonderful people here in Los Angeles. God has been more apparent here than anywhere else on this trip for me. It would have seemed to be an unlikely place for him to be so evident, but it was overwhelmingly clear that he was showing up. I am so inspired by The Dream Center and the people I met there. The place is filled with residents/volunteers/staff who have been through hell on earth, yet they are more than passionate about God—passionate about helping people get out of that hell. They are going out every single day and being Jesus in the people’s lives that need it the most—the prostitutes, addicts, homeless, hungry, hurting, broken people. It’s what Jesus did, and it’s what he asked the church to do. To see people getting out and doing it wholeheartedly, and to get to be a tiny little part of that effort, was an incredibly powerful thing.

When we arrived at The Dream Center on Thursday, we planned to help out for a day and be on our way. Since then, we have continually said we’ll leave tomorrow, tomorrow… tomorrow. I assumed that I would dislike everything about L.A. Nothing about the place appealed to me before arriving here—now it's right up there on the top of my list... despite all the traffic and smog. Well, we stayed as long as we could. We have something lined up in San Diego that we have to get to. I wish that we had another month to work with you all at The Dream Center. Thank you so much for what you are doing—thanks for a life-changing experience. I truly hope to be back someday.