Mobile Loaves & Fishes Blog

URGENT Call to Action for the #Homeless! Please Help Mobile Loaves & Fishes Now!

Mobile Loaves & Fishes needs your help now to advocate on our behalf to the Austin City Council for a resolution that is coming before the Council this Thursday June 24th.  We need you to email, call or communicate NOW to the Council in support of the pending resolution.  The fastest most immediate way is to send one email that will reach the Mayor and each Council Member by clicking on the following link:

Email Mayor & Council Members NOW

This resolution will instruct City Staff to work with Mobile Loaves & Fishes on either gaining approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to use a tract of land out by the airport or to find another suitable tract of land for us for our groundbreaking Habitat on Wheels RV Community housing model.  This is currently item # 83 on the morning Council Agenda.

You could email something like this:

Dear Mayor and Council Members:

I am writing in support of Item # 83 on the June 24th, 2010 City Council Agenda.  This resolution on behalf of Mobile Loaves & Fishes will place a very powerful tool into the continuum of care tool box by providing permanent, supportive and affordable housing to those that find themselves chronically homeless.

Thank you,

Your Name

You can learn all about our Habitat on Wheels  model by clicking on the link below:

Habitat on Wheels RV Community Model

For over five years Mobile Loaves & Fishes has been lifting chronically homeless brothers & sisters off of the streets of Austin into affordable and permanent RV's and Park Model Homes.  Today we own about 45 of these RV's that house over 55 people.  Many of our residents have been with us since its inception and over 85% have maintained stable housing for well over a year.  We are asking the City to merely provide us with a tract of land suitable for our purposes and we will raise all of the capital necessary to build and operate the community.

Thank you for your attention to this very important issue.  The community needs your help now.  Your voice (and emails!) make a big difference and are heard.

-Alan

Get the official windfall numbers here for the "I Am Here" Texting Campaign #iamhere

1,373

That's right...1,373 texts.  Let me spell that out for you so there is no misunderstanding.  One thousand three hundred seventy three!!  At $10 a pop that adds up to $13,730!  That is a mere $1,730 above our goal of $12,000 to get Danny & Maggie off the streets.  Not quite the windfall some are erroneously reporting.

As many of you recall we had this powerful campaign in April where we put Danny a homeless guy up on a billboard and asked people to text "Danny" to 20222 to donate $10 to help us get he and his wife Maggie into a home.  Go check out the I Am Here website to get a full description of what we accomplished.

For those wondering what we did with all the money we hauled in...well, we got Danny & Maggie into a home. For those reporting we hauled in $100,000 please correct your dis-information.

-Alan

Why Don't Danny & Maggie Just Behave!?? "That Is, The Way We Want Them To Behave." #iamhere

Tuesday evening June 15th KXAN the NBC affiliate in Austin ran a story on Danny & Maggie about how they are back on the corner of Braker Lane and IH 35 panhandling.  You can see the story by clicking here.  We are grateful to KXAN for continuing to elevate the dialogue of the chronic homeless here in Austin and we are happy to be a part of that dialogue.  We do take one extraordinary exception to one part of their story however.  KXAN implied that they tried to reach me for comment repeatedly but without return phone call but the truth is that I was out of town on a fishing trip with my church and was not reachable.  They were told this by our staff.  They were also told this by our official spokesperson.  As the spokesperson for Mobile Loaves & Fishes I look forward to every opportunity to speak on behalf of those brothers and sisters whom we serve.

Now on to Danny & Maggie.  It is with pure joy that I am able to report to you that for nearly three months Danny & Maggie have a place off the streets that they can call home.  They are progressing just as we expected. While making this radical transition they have longed to reconnect with old friends; both those on the streets and those that served them in ministry while they were on the streets.  This longing led them back to their old stomping grounds at Braker and IH 35.  Of the almost 90 days  they have been off the streets they have spent about 5 days out on their old stomping grounds.  Folks, this is a celebration!  Now personally I wish they would not go back there but we live in a free world and they are allowed to do so.  I respect and honor their decision.  I do pray that as time goes on there will be a greater connection in their new community and a lesser longing for their old.

We are learning that for anyone, much less those that have experienced this type of homelessness, it takes about one month for every year you have lived in a place or a lifestyle to make the adjustment.  For folks like Danny & Maggie this may mean an adjustment period of a year or longer.  For those of you with families that have had to transfer from one city to the next think of the extraordinary adjustments you have had to make.  So too for Danny & Maggie.  Merely receiving a place they can call home does not allow us to say they have been fixed and repaired.  It is a giant step though.

Now let's talk about panhandling.  Virtually everything I have to say about panhandling can be found at www.mlfnow.org/panhandling.  Simply, I would prefer no one felt compelled to have to panhandle for any reason.  Those that do find it humiliating.  Read the citeable studies found at the above link to get the facts.

When questioned by the reporter about why they needed to panhandle Danny & Maggie responded that they needed the money to live and pay bills now that they are housed.  Let me go on record by stating emphatically that in the almost six years we have been housing formerly chronically homeless brothers and sisters 100%, YES 100%, of them have struggled in almost a life and death situation to pay their bills every month.  Come on folks!  These people live in poverty and we are grateful every month that any of our residents are able merely sustain themselves.  We are not moving this population of people into a middle class lifestyle.  What is really incredible though is our residents level of happiness however, not without the pitfalls of life.

"Why don't they just get a job!", many would say.  For a variety of reasons many of our brothers and sisters have a difficult time gaining employment.  Their fault, our fault or nobody's fault the fact remains that many of the chronically homeless are unemployable in the way you and I typically think of employment; the forty hour week 8 to 5 type of job.  You can read a lot about how we view this by going to www.mlfnow.org/jobs.  We talk extensively about why and then offer a program as to how we can begin to change this for some.  We have been changing the lives of several formerly chronically homeless through our micro economic jobs model.  If the only answer is to stuff them into the 8 to 5 box we are only going to be marginally, if that, successful.  We are thinking outside the box with results.

We would love for you to go read about our Community First! approach to home by going to www.mlfnow.org/how.  Here you will find our business plan for the RV community we are proposing as well as a number of other documents that details very specifically our philosophy.  No secrets here as these documents have only been up on our website for several years now.

Everyone wants to know how much money we made on the I Am Here campaign.  Many suggest or allude that there was a windfall.  Let me assure you there was no windfall.  We are grateful that we exceeded the goal to raise enough money to get Danny & Maggie into a home plus a little more to perhaps get another chronically homeless individual off the streets of Austin.  We were blown away by the national attention the campaign received and are ecstatic with how viral the campaign elevated this very important issue.  Mission accomplished!

Let's celebrate a victory and continue to dialogue together on how our community can best tackle this very pressing issue.  Mobile Loaves & Fishes is committed to this mission of serving our most vulnerable.  We love to love those whom many choose to despise.  We welcome those who want to join us in this effort.  We are making a powerful difference.

-Alan

Powerful Metrics from I Am Here Campaign

Incredible metrics from the powerful I Am Here campaign created for Mobile Loaves & Fishes by T-3.

This report was as of Friday May 7. But we know that the campaign is still getting lots of air time.

With the social media traffic we are now over 10,000,000 impressions.

Total Story Count: 231

Total Nielsen Audience: 9,182,034

Total Run Time: 5:06:05

Total Calculated Ad Equivalency: $179,056

Total Calculated Publicity Value: $537,135

Ending #Homelessness from a Socio-economic Perspective

Ending Homelessness from a Socio-economic Perspective
Guest blogger -  Richard R. Troxell
President House the Homeless
Livable Incomes Coordinator
National Coalition for the Homeless

Richard is a personal friend of mine and one of the strongest advocates for the homeless I have ever met.

-Alan

News Flash; If you think that we can just put homeless people back into a broken socio-economic system ...think again.

As we look at the socio-economic condition of homelessness, we recognize that we can view homelessness into two major categories, those who can work and those who cannot work. 

Hard working people are falling out of our work force. They are ending up homeless on our streets.  We see these people as broken individuals standing on our street corners, painfully visible and asking for help; some call it begging, others know it as panhandling.  In any event, they are no longer seen as members of a family that they once were.  Now, she lives in a shelter and he stands on a street corner...broken and pleading for help from his fellow human beings.

We respond as best we know how.  We, “the community,” brush these individuals off, detoxify, them, teach them the art of resume writing and interview talking and place them into jobs and point them to the general housing market.  Well done!  Bravo!  Everyone pitched in to help.  The entire community rallied behind our needy...our homeless.  But what has really occurred?  Who knows?  Without follow-up evaluation one year later, we won’t learn if the minimum wage job or even the $10.00 per hour job into which they were placed was or wasn’t enough to sustain them through the economic bumps ahead.  However, we do know that the minimum dollar amount needed to sustain them can be simply stated with the phrase: “Living Wage.”   A “Living Wage” is the base amount necessary for a person to afford basic food, clothing and shelter...no more no less.  This is the same vision and understanding embraced by the U.S. Congress following the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression in the 1930s.  Then, in 1938, in response to the wage problem, the U.S. Congress created the Federal Minimum Wage.  This worked fairly well until the 1980s when because the wage was not indexed to the cost of living, or anything for that matter, our nation’s housing rents outstripped the wage being earned.  So now we must “reset” the wage just like a clock and index the wage to the local cost of housing throughout the entire United States.  Therefore, that is what we have done.  Using existing Government Guidelines, we have devised a single national formula that ensures that if a person works 40 hours in a week, they will be able to afford basic food, clothing, and shelter (including utilities).  In other words, a roof over their heads...other than a bridge.

But in further examining the idea of simply putting people back into the work force, we must explore what that looks like. Minimum wage workers work 5-6 days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.  They are only assured (hopefully) of a day off to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. Additionally, the rigorous demands of daily work are ever accelerating and continue to expand exponentially.  Think about the technological advances in the last ten years alone that range from desk top computers to laptops, cell phones, camera phones, Blackberries and i-phones with Apps.  Think of the world as a merry-go-round full of a dozen kids spinning like crazy and holding on for dear life.  As the merry-go-round accelerates, regardless of the strength of their white knuckle grips, some can’t hold on and they go flying off as the speed continues to increase.  It’s the same in the work place.  Minimum wage workers don’t get two weeks paid vacation.  They don’t get vacation time, personal time or even the luxury of getting sick.  Minimum wage workers are subject to endless stress.  As the stress demands increase, so does the pressure on the individual worker.  They must show up day in and day out regardless of their problems at home, their energy levels, or routine bouts of depression.  The instant they say, “I can’t go in tomorrow, I’m calling in sick,” they get replaced. They spin off the merry go-round of life and end up homeless on the streets of America.

It makes little or no difference what kind of worker you’ve been.  To the employer, what matters is that you show up day in and day out...no matter what.  Failure to show up every single day will get the minimum wage worker the instant boot.  Someone else is waiting in the wings who is desperate to fill the worker’s vacant slot.  Clearly, the employer must have workers present everyday to accomplish what needs to be done to advance the business.

But, what if we start “thinking outside the box with both employer and employee’s welfare in mind?  Example:  Employer with financial means purchases production equipment beyond the means of the individual workers such as a $5,000 hot dog stand.  The employer leases the use of the equipment to an individual worker or workers.  The worker operates the equipment on a daily basis as one would expect.  However, to address the employee needs for time-off, another (swing) worker is tapped to come to work and fill in the vacant times so that the equipment is used to its fullest. This is referred to as “flex” work  (please see www.mlfnow.org/Jobs fo learn about about micro economic business model to employ the homeless). In this fashion, both the employer and the employee attain what they need and want: job stability and economic growth.  This is one simple example of the kind of change and flexibility needed to enhance our chances of successfully ending homelessness for workers. 

For those who cannot work, the U.S. Congress established a government based financial support system, Supplemental Security Income, SSI, designed to provide a small monthly monetary stipend.  This is presently set at $674 nationwide.

However, ours is a nation of thousands of local economies ranging from poverty in Clay, West Virginia to the opulence of New York City. And yet, the current approach is to award a single uniform dollar amount to every individual with disabilities no matter where they live throughout America. Clearly, this “one size fits all” approach is an illogical response that has the result of leaving millions of recipients susceptible to the economic forces of homelessness.

This solution is simple.  We must index this stipend to the local cost of housing throughout the United States.  As with the Universal Living Wage, we can use the Housing and Urban Development, HUD, Section 8 Fair Market Rents to ensure that we properly index the SSI stipend to local economies across America.  This will ensure that whether someone is working forty hours in a week or struggling with disabilities, they will be able to afford the basics of life: food, clothing, shelter (utilities included) and have access to the emergency room.  And finally, if others are working by utilizing  flex work days of an unlimited nature, they will be able to re-enter the work force in a calm, productive, stress free manner, that provides them a living and the employer the work performance required for a successful business. 

We are committed to creating the systemic and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent and end homelessness.

Press Release from City of Austin Regarding the #homeless and Pets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 7, 2010
Contacts: Barbara Rush: (512) 925-2271


Plan Implemented to Provide Shelter for the Homeless & Their Pets During Extreme Cold Weather


The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department has implemented a plan to shelter pets for homeless Austinites during cold weather events. A priority of the emergency response plan calls for sheltering pets at the same location as the pet owner.

“Our primary concern is that we provide our homeless citizens and their pets a safe and secure place to stay,” says Council Member Laura Morrison. “When the temperature dips to extreme lows, we want people to know they can come in from the cold and feel assured that they and their pets will be cared for.”

The City of Austin’s recreation centers, used as temporary shelters when demand is high, have indoor spaces that can be used to shelter animals with their owners. When a homeless individual is being transported to a recreation center, the animal control staff will transport their pets to the same facility.

The ARCH and Salvation Army are Austin’s primary shelters, but cannot accommodate animals indoor. For pets whose owners are sheltered at those locations during extreme weather, the pets will be transported to off-site shelter for the night and returned to their owner the next morning.

All Austinites in need of shelter, including those with pets should go to the ARCH. Located at: 500 East 7th St. (7th at Neches)
For help transporting pets to the ARCH – Call 305-4160 (ask for Manager on Duty)



Barbara Rush
Policy Advisor
Office of City Council Member Laura Morrison
512-974-1625 / 512-974-1886 (Fax)
[email protected]
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/morrison.htm

Karpophoreō: To bear good fruit, to bear good deeds

Steven here of the Karpophoreō Project. Check out the latest KP newsletter written below.

Steven

---------------------

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Karpophoreō Project,

My sleep was arrested in the middle of the night by a phone call. Knowing that no one would call at that hour were it not an emergency, I stumbled out of bed and answered as quickly as I could. One of our community members, overcome with a grief that annually reoccurs during this holiday season, considered suicide while being inebriated. A neighbor called the police when the episode became public. Calling me that night was the closest friend of this person, asking if I would allow the community member to stay on my couch for the night. The police had threatened arrest if the community member was found outside again that night. And so, in the early hours of the morning, I was making a bed and asking about the source of that night’s troubles.

What is the Karpophoreō Project? Many of you have asked me that question and I have striven to give you the most complete answer I could. Is it a homelessness project? Is it a recovery project…? Is it a Life skills…jobs…housing…gospel…sustainability project? Yes. Over the course of the last 5 months, I now understand the KP is all of those things and more. Most fundamentally, it is a people project. We seek to see a person as God’s sees them and to maintain, against all accusers, that there is hope for their future; to understand what God would have them do, what he would have us do for them, in order to bring about a unique manifestation of his glory through that person’s life.

Some of you have noticed that my job description is listed as “Good Soil Developer”. I have known that to be my calling for several years now, but am finding it more true every day. It comes from Jesus’ Parable of the Sower. As you likely know the parable well, I will say only this: the gospel seed is scattered along several different soil conditions. Each soil receives the seed as it is able. All but one of the soils is limited in its ability to receive the true purpose for which the seed was planted, being unable to transform it into a fruit-bearing plant. The failure is not that of the seed but the soil conditions as they existed before, and continue to exist after, the soil and seed were wed. What can be done for these harsh soils? Should we abandon them in our search for worthy recipients of these seeds of “Good News”? Of course not. Rather, we develop the soils as we are able, fostering for them an environment that can bear good fruit from the seeds that are sown. That is what we are striving to do at the Karpophoreō Project. And to do this, we earnestly request your prayer intercession for us who are giving our lives to this goal as well as for those who have made it through so much to be here, alive and hopeful about their future. This is not a project that can be built solely by human hands.

On a logistical note, we will be making a trial run at the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market this Saturday from 9-1pm. We will be selling our very first harvest of the season as well as some winter hats that one of our community members has begun to knit to pay her utilities for the winter. It will be a small harvest but the fruit (or, vegetables and greens in this case) is/are good! If you’re in the area, stop in and say hi.

Societal Honey- What the #Homeless Have in Common with the Honey Bee

My daughter Taylor wrote this as a paper for one of her classes at Mount St. Mary's University.  Her daddy is proud and I thought you would enjoy.

-Alan

I pass them everyday. They are always there, without fail. Usually I just walk around and don’t even give them the time of day; sometimes they get in my face from out of nowhere, and I flinch, as to avoid fully encountering their presence. Today, however, I broke my pattern. Today I stopped and let them charm me with their story.

People see bees as two things: a popular Halloween costume and a pesky insect, buzzing in the ear, relentlessly seeking the nectar that surrounds us. The bees tell me otherwise. As I watch them, swarming the trashcan like electrons to the nucleus of an atom, my rhythm syncs with theirs. 

I dive into their world and suddenly feel isolated, unwanted. People walk by and don’t even look at me. The buzz of thought fills my head, and I wonder where they came from. Surely the campus trashcans are not their natural habitat. Have they been abandoned by their colonies, left to survive in the man-made wild? Do they have a family or a life away from the Mount? Empathy for the bees inundates me. I feel their pain, rejected by the world, misunderstood. Nobody wants them. They stick together as rejects of the world, thriving off the company of kindred souls.

The sting of a bee is undesirable at best. It has always annoyed me, subsequently having to deal with the throbbing, the itching, the piercing pain, until alas it dissipates. This sting defines the bees, but now I see that that characterization is perhaps unjust. The bee stings defensively, not offensively. They do not swarm around in search of their next victim, but rather only sting when intruded upon. They are not evil and malicious, but rather guarded and protective. Their desire is not to harm, and passersby remain hassle-free. 

But still, people cannot stand them. It seems like such juxtaposition that something as sweet as honey can come from this seemingly vile insect. If we just got rid of them, people say, then they would not bother us any more. No more bee stings. No more swarming around our trashcans. HELLO!!! ATTENTION: WORLD! If we killed off all the bees, then who would pollinate our plants? The existence of our vegetative food supply lies in their ability to pollinate, and do not even get me started on a world with out honey!

We are so quick, as a human race, to judge solely based on the qualities that bother us. Bees are so helpful, yet we write them off because they could potentially sting us. Your neighbors could be the nicest people in the world, but because of the way they dress, you won’t talk to them. We are unable to see far enough beyond the traits that we deem undesirable to find the person within. 

I drive past them everyday. They are always there, without fail. Usually I just drive on by and don’t even give them the time of day; sometimes they come to my window, and I look away, as to avoid fully encountering their presence. Today, however, is a new day. Today I stop, and their story captivates me.

Society sees homeless people as two things: lazy and addicted. The homeless tell me otherwise. I watch them in the park, swarming around the truck that has just come to bring them food, like bees to a trashcan. Their humanity enthralls me.

I try to immerse myself into their foreign world, but something blocks me. They are too… human. They are not some animal or insect; they are human beings, just like me, made of the same fabric. Where are they from? Where is their family? Why have they been abandoned? They have been rejected by the world. Unwanted. Misunderstood. They form a family on the streets, united not by what they have in common, but by what they are all lacking – Home. I feel the sting of loneliness, of hopelessness, in their hearts. It pains me to try to imagine a life so void of love, but even my attempts fall short of their reality. This sting does not dissipate; it does not fade over time. It is not temporary. 

Every day people pass the homeless by and act as if they do not exist. Why do we fear them? They will not bother us unless we are bothersome to them. Homeless people are not generally aggressive; in fact, I have met the most big-hearted, caring and generous people out on the streets. 

In Vancouver there is a huge homeless population. For the 2010 Olympics, in an effort to make the city clean, pretty, and presentable to the nations of the world, the British Colombian government has decided to give the homeless people a one-way bus ticket out of the city. WHERE ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO GO??? Homeless people are human beings. Like the bees, they cannot simply be shipped off, exterminated from their habitat. And like bees we rely on the homeless. Mother Teresa has a great saying, “When we all get to heaven we are going to owe a great debt of gratitude to the poor for having brought us closer to God”. They pollinate our relationship to God and to each other. The hospitality of merely offering a meal connects one heart to the other. 

The state of homelessness, not the people, is transitory if we allow it to be. For this is not a question of should they stay or should they go. It is a question of how we, as a society, can create a world in which nobody is forced into living on the streets. It is not acceptable for them to be pushed out of their natural habitat and forced to swarm where the food is. 

What makes the rest of us so much better than the panhandler on the street? Where do we get the idea that we deserve more or better than they do? There exists this false sense of superiority because we do not understand their story. We cannot understand what they have been through. However, if we remove the blinding judgment and approach them with love and compassion, we have the ability to transform the quality of their lives. We can get them off the streets and give them another chance at life. 

For it is not merely in their existence, but in their ability to be a part of society, that they find their purpose, and when they find it, when they realize what they have truly been made for, they produce a honey sweeter and richer than all the bees’ honey in the world.

-Taylor

"Draw Close" Music Video on the #Homeless & Mobile Loaves & Fishes

Draw Close from Kristopher Rutherford on Vimeo.

Life may not seem easy, But the solution is simple

I met Gary several years ago on a street corner.  He was panhandling to support his heroin addiction.  Coming up on a year he has been sober from this debilitating disease.  He now lives in one of our RV's that is part of our Habitat on Wheels program (www.mlfnow.org/HOW).  He is a guest blogger and he too is transforming the world one human at a time.

-Alan

   My name is Gary and I am a very grateful recovered Heroin addict. It is only by the Grace of a loving and forgiving God that I can say ‘that’ today, because left to my own decisions and free will I would still be suffering in the disease of addiction by using or no longer be here to share my story of recovery with others. Since November 1, 2008, I have not found it necessary to use heroin or other illegal drugs and only prescribed narcotic medication when necessary.
 
   The abstinence from heroin use has been a fairly simple decision for me given the knowledge of the harm and destruction it has caused me both physically and mentally. The diseases I created in my liver through precarious I.V. drug use over the last 38 years are evident in my physical appearance and my abilities today. Daily I awaken, and retire at night, with a feeling of lethargy. My ability to think with clarity and make decisions without hesitation has been affected. I refer to it as my “..foggy, drug – affected mind”.
 
   The mental anguish and humility create isolationism to not let others know I suffer like this, until I try to express or converse in detail. - i.e.: While I am clear at present what I want to say here and how I want to express it, I am reaching for the words that I could recall before by referring to a thesaurus. This is why sometimes it may take longer to write a simple letter. First, I want to say something exactly how I feel it and second, I do not want to say something that may be misunderstood and taken wrong. Anguish, humility, frustration and embarrassment are just some of the mental nuisances that create a feeling of guilt. Others may consider this commonplace in everyone’s life. The guilt is there for me because I know of the harm done to myself for continuing to use drugs and alcohol for so many years. When I do ‘get it right’, I allow my ego to take over and I have learned, in sobriety, this is just Edging God Out of the glory of my recovery.
  
    I only share all of this because I pray it may help others to think about the decision to use, or continue to use such toxins that will negatively affect them later in life; if it has not already. My God gave me the ability to love and share with others as a beacon of His love for them. The guilt and resentment created, by me, through long – term drug use reflected the wrong picture of my God’s reason for placing me in others lives, it has also left me feeling empty and alone in this world before now. I am grateful my God so loves me that today I have several individuals that express unconditional care and concern by trying to help me regain my direction in this life. I say “this life” because I feel this is only a temporary assignment until I fulfill God’s original intent, which was to live and share happiness with Him in Eternity.
 
    I write these contributions with the desire that others will become more understanding and compassionate to those suffering from addiction, and for those who have found recovery to be more empathetic to others that have reached the extremes of degradation I did. It took me a long time to reach this point in life to finally decide I was finished, but I know there is a reason I have suffered. If my suffering was nothing more than an example to show other addicts what would happen from continued drug use, or help others to see it more clearly, it is worth it to me. My God does not make mistakes. I have lived the life He intended for me from the day I was created, by Him. I will remain loyal to Him and walk the paths He places in front of me. I have not worked this program to perfection; I am making progress. I cannot expect to undo what I have done in almost 40 years of destruction in just a few short months. I have made some mistakes, but I am still sober and still learning.
 
   This morning I prayed to my God to give me the strength to carry on with the assignment He has given and the clarity to see it, without hesitating. I feel I can accomplish this by surrendering to His will for me daily and allowing Him to direct my life as He desires. No man has ever walked this earth and lived a perfect life. Even Jesus Christ questioned God why He would forsake Him, but submitted to His authority knowing it was God’s plan. I was created for His pleasure and I want to make Him happy. Because of the free will He has given me, I may be unsteady at times, but those individuals He placed in my life today I consider His angels. I know they have been sent here to guide me, as long as I let them.
 
   I pray somebody that reads this finds their God and takes the time to consider the path He has prepared for them. Decisions are not an easy task and they are a part of the free will we possess. But I hope, just for today, they reach deep in their heart and make the right decision. I thank the employees and volunteers of Mobile Loaves and Fishes for giving a human touch reflecting God’s love especially David, Kay, and Alan, and Austin Recovery for showing me, “I am not alone.”  The Solution? ; “Let go and let God.” I pray my God will continue to bless each and everyone with love, happiness, and understanding. He has me, “one day at a time”.
 
“ God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference…”

~ gary