So I just got back from 24 hours on the streets of Skid Row with the Jonah Project (jonahproject.org), and I am presently recovering, or if I’m true with myself, I’m more like in a slow progression of “un-recovery” as I re-enter my pathetic daily process of finding the fix for my addictions that have been awaiting my return to the world and way of life that I claim as mine. In this moment I feel like I know nothing at all, other than this overwhelming notion that the past day didn’t just drift by my life. No, you see the past day drifted into my life in a way that has rattled and changed – in a way that will continue to sneak in and subvert my current living as I continue to find myself coming to life with vivacity and freedom, with the sparkling, flammable stories of the people of Skid Row dancing in my soul, bringing me to a divine place where I am found melodically shouting, “I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive!, I’m alive! . . . ,” as the tears spill down in believing unbelief.
Now that I’m back on campus, everyone is eagerly asking “DUDE! How was it man?” and I quite frankly don’t have a freaking clue how to respond. Partly because everything happened down there, and mostly because words just don’t have enough potential to make it real what it’s like to lie, vulnerable on the cold pavement of such a hostile area, with the aroma of piss filling the air around you; or what it’s like when you realize just how fragile life is 20 yards from a deadly shooting; or (as the saying goes) what it’s like to get high on the Holy Spirit while belting praise songs with a friend who is desperate for Jesus, but addicted to heroin; or what it does to your heart when you witness a woman walking down the street national geographic style yelling, “sex!, sex!” - or what the contrasting sensation is like to truly encounter the love and grace of God through a prostitute blooming with a long lost sense of beauty, simply because you offered her a pink rose. . . It is in the darkest of places that we find the greatest of Light.
So although I and 11 other friends from school didn’t go to Skid Row for the experience, it is our experiences that allow us make sense of our ultimate goal of being the love of Christ. What follows are glimpses our personal experiences, and just maybe, together we’ll begin to answer the question of how it was.
So I spent Friday night on the streets of Skid Row. Twenty-four hours of love with the Jonah Project (jonahproject.org): what an experience!!! To be honest, I've been having a really hard time communicating to people what that time was like. It’s just a completely different world on those streets. It’s one of those things that you have to experience; and I STRONGLY encourage you to experience it. But I know that what you want to hear is how my time on Skid Row was. So, even though I fear I will do a miserable job at communicating my experience, I'll give it my best shot.
After a couple hours on a few buses we arrived at our meeting place as the sky was getting darker. My first images of Skid Row were of dark figures and shadows filling the streets, the sidewalks, the parks...everywhere. I had no idea what was going on. It was like there was some kind of event that was going to start. Homeless people EVERYWHERE: hundreds of them. I didn’t know who was there with the Jonah Project and who was homeless. I knew no one there except the 10 others from APU.
Much of that first night was just absorbing what was going on around me, in this place so completely different than anywhere else I've ever been. My first impressions of Skid Row were of faceless people. I didn't know any of them. All I saw were bodies moving around in the dark. They weren't people to me yet. They weren't stories. They were just scenery that I was observing as if through a window.
And as I looked through this windowpane, I saw things I had never seen before. Money and drugs exchanged right on the sidewalk. Prostitutes trying to get attention on the street corner. I saw two guys fist fighting like I've never seen before, throwing punches that left each other bleeding from the mouth. I saw a lady in the middle of the street bare-breasted yelling "Sex! Sex!" I was a few blocks away from a shooting that turned out to be fatal. I saw an old lady who asked someone in our group to take her picture and then proceeded to hang her boob out from her shirt.
All of this I saw. But it didn't affect me too much (which I think was largely because of God's protection). But, like I said, I felt as if I were looking through a window into this world in need of so much love.
But I didn’t go completely unaffected. Because, when I think about it, it did affect me. It made me feel sad—so sad.
I could sense loneliness. Hundreds of homeless. All in one place. Yet all lonely. It was heart breaking.
That night we got in small groups and just walked the streets. We talked to some people. We handed out tracts. We had a worship session in front of the "Midnight Mission". (It was really actually pretty powerful when a 13/14 year-old kid from our group stepped up and starting playing/singing worship songs as a group of homeless gathered around him). We had another jam session with this really cool homeless guy named Chas (short for Charles; pronounced “chaz”). He played blues on an old beat up guitar and I joined in with my harmonica.
Chas was one of the first people I actually got to know. I learned his face. I heard his stories. He became a person to me. His story is a mixture of pain and questions and addiction, and yet there is in him a light that shines through it all as if maybe there is hope for a life of complete freedom.
He lived the life that almost all my college-friends and me are living now. He went to college. He had a double major. He graduated. He was engaged. Then one day he got in a car accident with his fiancée. She was killed and he fractured two of the discs in his back. During the process of healing they put him on heavy pain medications. He got addicted. Now he's a heroin addict.
He loves Jesus (and like I said, you can see the light shining through him). But he just can't get off of heroin (or off the streets). He's trying though. Today he is going to some 21-day rehab program and he's hoping this can finally get him off.
What an amazing guy though! I slept right between him and Blair that night. He would tell jokes and make us all laugh. I went to sleep with the smell of his cigarette drifting over me and the blues playing in the background.
And so slowly, the faceless shadows became people with stories. Chas was probably the one I got to know best. But there were others. Bob (who complained how no one could remember his name. "I mean comon! BOB! How could you forget Bob?!"). Peter (probably one of the most generous people I've ever known: he's homeless and yet he gives away $20 a week to whoever he feels needs it most). John (who either couldn't remember his past or didn't want to remember it; which made me really sad). David (who came to Skid Row to try to preach the gospel and share who God is, but who is now getting sucked into the black hole of drug addiction). Bruce (a friend of Chas' who is also trying to get off of heroin). These are no longer faceless people to me. I can now attach stories to each and every one of these faces.
On Saturday we continued to walk around and talk to people. We also spent a lot of time hanging out in Gladys Park. There was always a pickup basketball game going on. I played a few b-ball games and caught on to a few of the nicknames that everyone had: Groove, Gentle Jimmy, G-man, Unknown, Black, Solo. There were old men huddled around pic-nic tables playing dominoes. There was always loud hip-hop/rap music blasting away. There were semi-sober people dancing to the music. This park was the center of activity.
Patrick, the guy who heads up the Jonah Project, was talking to me about how down at Skid Row there's simply nothing to do. (Literally there's not much else to do than get drunk, get high, or have sex.) And so the park is such a cool place because it actually provides stuff to do and is a place with an active and positive atmosphere.
On Skid Row, almost everything is a free handout. All you have to do is stand in a few lines to get 3 free meals a day. (And not just meals, people were handing out Dove chocolate bars, Sunny-Delight juices, and other snacks). Stand in a line a bit longer and you can get a bed in one of the many Missions. Whereas people in many third-world countries are working their butts off to try to get their next meal, pay their next bill, provide for their relatives; people in Skid Row are working there butts off just to try to get their next fix.
Bruce panhandles on a freeway exit. Some days he makes as much as $110. But he's not using that to get himself off the streets. $20 of that goes to his regular dose of heroin fix. That's $20 a day!
I feel like people on the streets have a sense of entitlement. That they are at the bottom of the social latter, have nothing to give to society, and so therefore they deserve to get free handouts. And along with that mentality is a huge lack of responsibility.
Anyway, I have a lot more thoughts on this...but I'm still working them out. And I don't want to bore you with ramblings. Hopefully I've rambled enough to give you an idea of how my Skid Row experience was like.
-Skyler Russel
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My mind was blank at I entered the streets of Skid Row. A friend of mine looked at me after about 15 minutes and asked what I was thinking about. I couldn't even speak. People standing in the streets, dirty, uncovered, and most looking cracked out. Who would have thought a third world country existed in downtown LA where just a few blocks away there seemed to be an invisable wall between this country and the the world we live in daily.
Eventually as the whole group stopped and we had no idea what to do. So, a few people, including myself, walked over to a group of people standing in the street. I began a conversation with a beautiful man and began to listen to him. He was an ex-military, ex-heroine attic, and ex-lover. As he began to tell his story of his days on heroine I began to see God in his face. He talked about how he would help people by getting them this earth escaping drug and how he wanted to feel their pain, so he himself took sport to the drug. He provided a tent on the street for prostitutes who just wanted a break because they were tired. A tent. The only means of protection those girls had against the world they lived in.
Next I talked to a woman who told me God had sent her to us to be prayed for. I prayed for her and literally felt something pushing in my chest. After prayer I looked at her and she began to tell me her story. Her ex-husband is currently looking for her to kill her. Kill her for her money she is receiving from the government. She's homeless! She had been a nurse and worked with people in rehab. I was shocked and even as I write this I get goosebumps.
How had I been so sheltered my whole life from reality. There are people in danger on the streets every night while I laugh and hang out casually with my friends. Ultimately I was mad. These people know more about bible and faith and what it means to truely only have Christ as their provider and in no way shape or form have I ever experienced literally living off of Christ every day of my life. I still don't know what to think about my experience at skid row. There are honestly no words to describe how I felt or am still feeling about the experience. Ultimately it has shown me how ignorant I am of the world and my own faith. I Suck.
-Emily Rich
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So I just got back from doing this thing called 24 Hours of Love with The Jonah Project. One word: incredible. Essentially what we do is go spend 24 hours, 6 pm Friday to 6 pm Saturday, in Skid Row with the homeless there (if you aren’t aware of what Skid Row is, it’s an area in LA super concentrated with homeless people. They basically all get pushed into that area). We lived the life of a homeless person for 24 hours – no food except for handouts and a couple clif bars we brought, slept on the sidewalk, etc.
First things first. All of us from APU (about 11 in total) got together at around 3 o’clock to meet each other and get ready to head out. I had the pleasure of meeting some incredible people and praying with them. We then proceeded to go for 2 hours on a few buses to Skid Row. When we got there at about 6 pm we were greeted almost instantly by Patrick and his wife, the heads of The Jonah Project, (jonahproject.org. Check it out.) and some of his buddies including an awesome guy named Jedi, Brandt Russo from Adopt-A-Jesus (Check it out.), some guys that were traveling through the area with Enoch Magazine, and a few other incredibly welcoming and godly people with an incredible heart for the homeless and to share the love of Jesus.
We got together, prayed, and then Jedi basically took us for a tour of Skid Row. The amount of homelessness there is incredible – I’ve never seen so many people concentrated in one area living and sleeping on the streets, sometimes without even a blanket. Needless to say it was an eye opening and almost surreal experience, with our group sticking out like a sore thumb (both a bad and good thing, I think).
We were then basically told to just go off and talk to people – build some relationships. I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking to a beautiful woman named Mari who had recently come to CA from Mexico. Got some Spanish practice there… I have forgotten a lot. It was really enjoyable to be able to talk with her and communicate with her (on a super basic level) in her own language.
We then just basically walked around talking to people and handing out water, food, and blankets until like 1 or 1:30 am. I had the pleasure of meeting one Joel Jordan, a brother from Louisiana just passing through Skid Row who knew Patrick. We had the joy of finding out we listened to (and could sing and play on guitar) a lot of the same bands and songs. Enjoyment ensued.
After getting to chat and pray with a ton of people, all while at first feeling a bit awkward and learning a thing or two about the life down in Skid Row (we were definitely outsiders, and could feel it. This was a really great thing to some people and a really bad thing to others. There was both love and animosity towards us, but definitely more love. Which is encouraging), we set up sleeping bags and blankets on the sidewalk and headed off to bed. Although before that we got to meet a guy, one Charles “Big Friendly”, with the most radical biceps I have ever seen. Especially on a skinny, tall guy.
I was so tired and in deep sleep that while some of our buddies that we were with who stayed up all night talking to people and handing out food and blankets met a man named Russell who was very sick. They brought him back to our little area and (apparently) paramedics came and took him away. This all happened about 10 feet from me, but I had no idea until I was told in the morning because I was so tired.
We woke up at around 7 or 7:30 and handed out donuts and water to people. We then moved our way to Gladys park, a local park area with a basketball court and some chess and domino tables and such. This seemed to be where a lot of people hung out during the day. It was fun to hang out and watch some basketball and meet some people there. At around 10 o’clock I heard 7 gun shots and saw a big group of people about 100 feet off scatter and run and get down and who knows what. The reactions varied from getting down on the ground repeating, “is it over?! Is it over?!” to complete nonchalance, acting as if nothing had happened. It turns out a man got shot in his leg and ended up bleeding out and dying. That’s just life down there, apparently. It blew me away how some guys continued playing basketball as if nothing at all had happened.
-William Cook
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