I ain't as good as I'm gonna get, but I'm better than I used to be

Santa Monica for Super Bowl sounded like a good idea so we ran with it. We left the dream center yesterday and headed to the ocean. We had a great time hanging around the downtown scene here last night and saw my team lose... Its not so much that I like the Patriots as I just haven't ever liked the Giants. But we had a good time meeting the locals here and seeing what the area looks like. Not sure how long we will hang out in town for until we start heading south towards San Diego.

The Dream Center... I am going to attempt giving a brief description of our time spent here and maybe try and explain some of the things we were able to experience. This will not be easy, the five days spent here were unlike any other five days in my life. I saw the good, bad, and the ugly all within minutes of each other which is why it seemed so unreal.

We were rushed on time leaving Burbanks to get to the Dream Center on Thursday by 1pm. We thought we would get a tour and say cool, this place is doing good things. We get there and they say- get in on it, help us load this truck. Before we knew it, we were traveling in a nice Jaguar through Compton and South Central LA following an old box truck full of food. Uncomfortable is a word that immediately came to my mind when describing the feeling while getting out of the car in what I was told is "the Projects." We started unloading the truck and I got to interact with some of the people here on the site. Bagging food, crackin jokes with some of the people, it all felt good, I was getting comfortable. Then my comfort zone was shattered when I was asked to pray with people as they come through the line... real talk- I have never felt very comfortable praying out loud with people. In fact, I have troubles praying out loud by myself at times. Now I am called to pray with people who I don't know, people I know nothing about, in South Central, LA. Talk about immersion, I think of the bandaid metaphor in relation to this. There is no easing in to it, no getting warmed up, just thrown in to it. I had the option of saying I'm not comfortable with it but I had a good friend call me out the other day when making up excuses. My exact words to her were "I rather walk the walk than talk the talk" while talking about spreading the word and witnessing to others on the road. I made excuses like I'm not comfortable or I don't like talking at people like this. This person came back with nearly a novel's worth of comments in rebuttal to my lame excuses. This popped into my head as I debated what to do when asked to stand at the back of the line and pray. So I did what I didn't want to do but did what I knew I should be doing.

I had a profound epiphany of who I am this past week. I was asked the question a week ago, what have you learned about your self on the road. I said something like I have learned that I like diving into new experiences. This seemed a little shallow for the depth of the question so I had been pondering this for the last while. The Dream Center was founded by Matthew Barnett when he came to the LA area. He came to the inner city not to relate to others, not to say I know where your coming from, not because he had some connection to this group of people, but because he loved people. He wanted to help any way he could. He started out giving groceries to families who needed help. This was profound to me, the most basic idea of loving others who you have no prior connection to. I have learned that people are good, if not great, and I love being with them, I love talking with any of them, I love helping them, I fully believe I love them. Believe me that this is not easy for me to admit, type, or even contemplate. When writing this I am trying to imagine the thoughts that people may have about me saying this and potential arguments to why I may not love people. But I threw it all out the window and stand by my words. I love people. That plain and simple, that vague, that generalization of the word people, including most, and still working towards including all. It took me one year of living on a school bus meeting thousands of people from white, black, poor, rich, strong, weak, old, young, curly hair, no hair, to realize that I love them. I could get on my soap box right now and start down talking the media for giving a terrible portrayal of people around the world but instead I will stick to telling you my portrayal. People are good.

Skid row is the next topic I want to tell you all about. Background on this place- it is a place where anything goes, and people find themselves here when they can admit rock bottom. It is a few blocks of where the city turns a blind eye and indirectly creates a place for people on the streets to live, stay, and potentially fuel the problem they are in. The Dream Center has consistently stepped in and had a presence in this area. On Thursday I was able to go along on the bus to try and invite people here to come to the Thursday night church service at Angelus Temple church. I have a hard time writing about what I saw and how I felt because I don't want this to come off as me exploiting these people and their lives but it is something I would have never dreamed of being in the United States of America. My guess is police choose to not show a heavy presence in the area to somewhat contain the situation to this part only. But once getting off the bus, it felt hopeless and almost not worth our time. Some people were not even in a state of mind able to hold a conversation, others have seen this bus pull up a hundred times and talk to the Dream Center people for sport, others take offense to anyone talking to them in general, and then I found the small population with hope in their eyes looking for a way out. In the first ten minutes of walking around and asking people to come, I thought a full size bus was overkill and we could have come with a van to take us all out. To my surprise we left skid row with a full bus... I got the opportunity to meet and talk with some great people with stories that should be a best selling book. I found so many good people in the midst of, to the untrained eye, hell. The diamonds amongst the rough. It was such a shock when we left on the bus to church with these people and got the happy, upbeat, church service with live awesome music. This must have felt so unreal for someone who has lived on skid row and maybe a rescue mission for the last few days. After this hour and a half of church and upbeat music, they get on a bus and head back to lay their head down on the cold, broken, and filthy curb amongst crack addicted felons, scared-for-their-life elderly men and woman, and crime driven youth. This is where they will spend their night in attempt for sleep, only to wake up to the aftermath every single morning...

Throughout the next few days we worked with several other programs that brought me down to skid row. Again and again I found that all the rough, all what seemed to be "hell" creators in the area, are still good people. Life experiences, relationship problems, addictions, or just a series of "tough luck" has landed people here. When looking at the situation, it would be a tough place to leave if the problems you have draw you closer to it. My heart aches to see this place and meet these people. I want to help everyone of them, I want them to have the first step to getting where they want to be; and so does the Dream Center. Thank God someone else's heart broke at one point and said someone needs to do something. The place that was founded on the pure and simple dream of helping others is now catering to hundreds and hundreds of people. I feel so fortunate to have witnessed the ministry that is facilitated and brought forth via the Dream Center.

While in Chino, a lady named Pam brought a video series to the lunch we were invited to and we watched a short segment of it. The basis of it was knowing truly what you should be doing and what you truly do. There is a standard of life, a comfort level, or something else that we all have that really holds us back from what we know is right. I am guilty of this over and over again. We reason with our selves and make self-excuses of why we can't give this up and follow the dust trail of Jesus. It isn't an easy path and would be very uncomfortable. To bring this back around, there are people that really do give up a lot just to be a brother or sister to others. I heard a song the other day that I found to be so true in my life. The chorus goes "I ain't as good as I'm gonna get, but I'm better than I used to be." Looking back on my life, it seems so apparently true. I have been living and learning everyday and I am growing to be a better person everyday. This growth I pray continues throughout my whole life and I know getting involved with places like the Dream Center are those leaps and bounds that truly allow me to realize it.

Leaving the Dream Center was a tough call. We said we were leaving tomorrow every day we stayed there. haha and we could probably continue that for a month if time would allow. But we made the decision to move on and have obligations to help out down in San Diego this week. I can not say enough good things about what I saw from the people at the Dream Center. There is the strongest presence of God in where I would say is the strongest presence of Hell I have ever seen. These five days where real, very real. I could continue this blog for a few hundred more paragraphs in talking about the people, programs, and ministry that happen in downtown LA. Once again, our preconceived ideas were shattered and in the attempt to help others, we have helped ourselves.