Faithfulness

God never ceases to amaze me with the amazing, crazy, ridiculous ways that He works.

My life has been completely changed in the time that I have been here. In one week, I will have been here for a year.
I still remember last Halloween, sitting in the airport at 6 AM with anticipation so thick I could hardly breathe.
Now, I cant even imagine what my life would have been like had I not bought that one way ticket to LA.
My family has been restored, my life has been changed, my attitude towards so many things has completely turned around.
God has been so faithful in so many ways it's hard to even write about it.

On Wednesday I, and a team of about 14, will be leaving with the World Missions dept here at the Dream Center to go serve in Guatemala for a month. I had eleven days to go and about $600 + dollars to raise. I was starting to get weary. I had started opening on Saturday mornings to raise money for this trip. The great thing about Saturdays is all our regular costumers. One of them is this tall good looking older guy named Patrick. We started chatting a few weeks ago and my trip came up. I explained to him what I was doing and why I was going and he was so excited about it. I brought him one of my letters about my trip so he could read more about why I wanted to go. That was probably 2 weeks ago.

That morning Patrick showed up to get his iced grande red eye and gave me an envelope with "Shannon Rae Galford" written on the front. He told me that he probably wouldn't see me before I left (in eleven days) but to have an amazing trip. I had a huge line so I couldnt open the envelope. Once my line was gone and people were waiting for the drinks, I went to the back and opened the card. This is what the card read...
"Shannon,
I think what you're doing is a wonderful, giving, selfless gift to those children. That kind of spirit is what this world needs more of. You definitely do shine. I, too, was a complete mess and a discovery and surrendering to a higher power saved me and my life. Please take this contribution to your trip with all my love and prayers.
Best,
Patrick."
I was so touched. In the envelope was another envelope. Inside was a check for one thousand dollars. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. I started crying immediately. I could not believe that someone, who is virtually a stranger, would invest so much into something I believed in. Not only did this pay for my trip but everything else I would need. I went to thank him but he was already gone.

The really cool part, that Patrick doesn't know, is that not only is helping send me, but he created a walking testimony to so many people. A lot of the people I work with and even most of my family are not christians. But they have heard me going on and on and on about how I knew God was going to take care of it all. Even in my few moments of doubt, I told them. And now, they can see first hand, just how big, and how amazing and how faithful God really is.

The Dream Center has shown me in some HUGE ways and also tiny ways just what God really can do. Whether it's a nice stranger sending me to another country to help kids or whether its getting on a truck to go and serve food to a family who is struggling on the other side of town. God's faithfulness is real. His power is real. And His love is real.

I can't wait to see what the next few years bring and how the Dream Center will continue to help people, just like me, to see how faithful God really is.

Bus ministry

Bus ministry.
Wow.
It’s a life-changing event, unless you’ve been through it- you truly can’t relate.
Someone came up with the idea to buy a school bus, fill it with gas and pay a driver to take it into the projects of Los Angeles and pick up juvenile delinquents, fatherless children, single mothers, gang members and others who will never be able to repay back all we plan to bless them with.

First, we load the bus up with bus pastors; imagine 4-6 (mainly White) suburban young adults who God had called to do missionary work in the inner city. Drive 30 minutes to Watts, knock on doors, wake up the teenagers, (who were out too late last night) mediate a couple minor disputes, load the bus, stop an argument from turning into a fight and head off to Angelus Temple.

Once we get all the kids off the bus, the true ministry begins; we must convince them that they can’t leave their seats during service so they must go to the bathroom before or after, attempt to persuade the younger kids that kids church is definitely more fun than big church and then corral the teenage boys to their seats, separate from the teenage girls. What a joy.
The service goes amazing, another wonderful word from Pastor Matthew, then back to the busses, and we can’t forget to grab the pizza and sodas along the way and get everyone comfortably settled.

The trips home are usually the best, engaging those beautiful children with the reality that they are children of God. We discuss everything from the sermon that morning to the latest rap CD. It doesn’t matter what you talk about, they are fully enamored with the idea that someone has taken time from their schedule to pour into them.
Sure it’s overwhelming and we don’t get paid to do it; but I find the blessings of watching these young men and women grow up to become Godly role models for the next generation is so much more rewarding than any amount of money.

If you haven’t done it yet, do it now, it will change your perspective and enhance your relationship with God more than anything else I’ve ever found.

Adrienne

Beauty in the City

Something I have tried to teach myself while I have been growing up is how to see the beauty in everything.
That is one thing that the Dream Center does so well.

A lot of people come to L.A. and they see the glamour and fame. But they also see the hurt and the garbage. Some people will look at where we are and who we are helping and not see what is they really are doing. I think it is so easy to sometimes forget that the homeless man on the street has a family somewhere. Or that the prostitute on Skid Row once had dreams and ambitions that are probably boxed away in the back of her heart. Its easy to forget that God has a plan for all of these people. Something amazing about L.A. though, is that it has some of the most amazing sunsets I have ever seen.

Sometimes I will be in my office late, or walking by a window on my way to my room and my breath will get caught because it is so awe inspiring. How can something so beautiful fall over a place that has so much pain?
But thats the thing--- here at the Dream Center we look at this city and we look at these people and we see how beautiful they are. We see the masterpiece, wonderful and complex, that God created them to be. We see the hope for the city and the beauty that God has laid upon it.

There is so much more than just what meets the eye. Like a sunset, though it is silent and doesn't speak, our city and the people here often are so beautiful and so breathtaking that it leaves me with a loss of words.
Look for the beauty in things...God created them, I promise the beauty is there.

Am I ready?

It was a hot and muggy summery evening. An almost absent breeze of fresh air made the smells of my surrounding environment so much more pungent. It was my first outreach with the Dream Center and I was feeling excited and yet a little apprehensive at the same time. Was I ready for this? Did I pray enough, was I filled with Faith and the Holy Spirit enough? Was I wearing the right clothes and not looking too much like a tourist? I came to realize that you could never be prepared enough to see what I saw on that first evening at Skid Row.

Some gutters were lined with pools of urine; rats were disappearing in and out of gutter holes, hundreds of people were lining either side of Skid Row, and there were makeshift tents - some made with cardboard, and others, shopping carts, plastic canopies, umbrellas, you name it. People were dressed in clothing I only imagined a third world would see. Groups of people were beat boxing, smoking, drinking, screaming and yelling obscenities. Some were, it seemed, taking drugs right in front of my nose, using needles and turning around so I couldn’t see properly. I was starting to feel overwhelmed and almost a little afraid.

Then on our right, a young lady was being consoled by some of her friends. She was high on drugs, drinking heavily, and not making much sense. It looked like she had had a really rough night. Her T-shirt was dirty and her black pants ripped and showing less than a little modesty. A thought went through my mind and in an instant the feelings of fear and intimidation were replaced by a sharp sense of disgust with satan’s vitriolic ways to heap upon mankind, guilt, shame, fear, a little humiliation, and pain to finally debase, disgrace, demean and turn God’s creation into an ugly mess.

Hoping to give her some sense of worth we were keen to give her a rose. “Hi, we’re with the Dream Center, would you like to accept this rose?” She stopped and looked at my friend and I, then smiled and said, “Oh that’s beautiful, thank you”. She seemed lucid for a little while and attempted to explain her situation. She had had a rough night the night before and said “it was never always like this. I once had a job and everything but then I just got hooked and ended up here. I wanted to go and get a job again but I don’t want to leave my friends here”. We saw her heart and her love for her friends and realized that even though she was living on Skid Row, God was still there. He was still waiting for His daughter and for so many of them to simply just call upon His name and He would answer them. But like so many of them in some way or other got hooked in by satan’s bait and never knew how to get out again. We ended up praying with her and gave her the scripture Jeremiah 29:11 and told her that god has a plan for her, plans to prosper her, not a life to harm her but to give her a hope and a future.

I realized that I couldn’t carry the burden of her pain and suffering, and that Jesus had already done this. All I could do further was to pray for her to understand that God loves her so much, and that He alone is the answer to her freedom from bondage. All God asks of me and from all of us, is to pray - The most powerful tool available to us.

Ladybug on skid row

I was talking with Latonya when I first saw him. She was still getting over the cold she had the week before. We were on the corner of 6th and San Julian. He passed by, not noticing me, his eyes unable to fix on one thing. He had on jeans, a dirty t-shirt, and well-worn tennis shoes. He paused and turned around looking and watching everyone and every little thing that moved. His long, golden curls bounced with every turn of his head. Finally, his eyes fixed on mine, but only for a second then were distracted by something else. They were like two blue stars, captivating everyone that looked into them. Even in that brief moment they locked with mine, I had already fallen deep under their spell. I had forgotten about my conversation and could not keep my eyes off him. His sweet face, curious of the world around him. He ran up a ways and lifted his little hand up to place it in one much bigger.

"Daddy!" he said in his wobbly voice. He turned around, tugging on the big hand and pointing at something near me. They turned around to come back and look at a ladybug that was crawling up the lamp post. By then it was much too high up for the little hand to grab, so the big hand reached out and coaxed the little bug to crawl on. I looked up and smiled.
"What is his name?" I asked.
"Eddie"
"Hi, Eddie." He looked up at me and curiously studied my face and then reached out to hold the ladybug. I crouched down to be level with his eyes. "What do you have there?" I said. He looked up and stared at me for a second.
"Daddy's the only word he knows yet." The big man grunted with a raspy chuckle to follow. He then turned to talk with a friend sitting on some cardboard on the sidewalk.

I reached out and touched Eddie's head. His hair was soft and the only part of him that was clean. His face had dirt all over it and crumbs lined his mouth.
"What are you doing out here Eddie?" I whispered. "An angel like you does not belong in a place like this." I turned and glanced at the big hands, which were now holding a lighter and a small glass pipe. He was still talking with his friend. I looked back at the little body in front of me. He was engrossed watching the little bug crawl up his arm. A tear slowly lingered down my cheek.

Eddie jumped and giggled when the ladybug finally took flight. He watched it fly away until he could no longer see it. He looked back at me and suddenly gasped. His eyes widened and eyebrows rose with concern. "Owee!" he said. He took a dirty little finger and roughly wiped the tear off my face and then kissed the spot where it had been. He stood back and smiled. I smiled back.

"C'mon Eddie." The big voice startled me. Eddie jumped up and skipped past his dad down the sidewalk, exploring and studying everything he passed, sometimes lingering behind until the big voice called out.
I still see him occasionally. I gave him a stuffed bear last week. He now has a red wagon that the big man pulls him in behind him. I want to take him home with me. I could be a mom…maybe one day I will be brave enough to ask.

-Jess

First Impressions VS Lasting Impressions

I had always loved inner city-on-the-streets-being-in-danger type mission work, so when I came to the Dream Center and was placed in the marketing department I was a bit baffled at what God was doing. At home, I taught at an alternative school that was filled with kids who didn’t fit the regular public school mold. Many of them were involved in gangs and drugs. Working with them was a huge passion in my life. Going from that to being placed in an 8-5 office job was a bit of a transition.

I spent a lot of time in prayer when I first got here. I didn’t understand God’s purpose. I went from gangs and drugs to being the red carpet check in person at an event we had my first working week! Of course, God revealed many things to me within time.

God reminded me that it was always my desire to learn more about ministries and possibly start my own one day. It occurred to me that I knew nothing of the business side of a ministry. I had always been in the streets, in places like Haiti, Jamaica, and Romania; but I knew nothing about raising support or marketing the ministry. Since I’ve been here, I’ve realized how important the marketing department is. Without the marketing department, we can’t do most of what we’re able to do at the Dream Center! We get the word out; we raise support. I feel like I’ve been attending college because I’m ingesting a surplus of valuable knowledge.

Last week I went out with the food truck. I saw the pain and hurt in some of their eyes; especially the families that came through. But then I also saw the glimmer of hope they received as their physical needs were being met by receiving free food and love from us. If we can take care of that burden in their lives, it frees them up to focus on working on bettering other areas of their lives. We can be “Jesus with skin on” and that beacon of light in the darkness; which is what all of us, as Christians, are called to do.

I’ve grown to deeply value and love my position at the Dream Center. Not only do I get to experience the marketing side but also publicity and public relations. Publicity is a field I never desired to work in but now I’ve come to welcome and love it!
I no longer question why God placed me in this department, but I feel blessed that I get the best of both worlds. I get to do my office work, but then I can go out on outreaches and see the effect of what we do. I can see the process as a whole. It’s important that we properly market the vision, receive support, and then go out and pour into the lives of others and restore their dreams and give them hope!

Carrie Miller