So we’re going to back up for a moment and talk about Christmas. I’ve been on my friends Paul and Cheryl to come visit me since about the second day I got here. They’re two of my oldest friends (in Cheryl’s case that true in a couple of ways…). Our friendships date all the way back to high school and Bible college. Anyhow, finally this past year they decided to bring a group of teenagers from their church (along with their whole family and two of my sisters) down to help out for Christmas.

My friend Corina’s ministry “El Jordan” (they work with families trying to come off the streets) prepares a Christmas dinner every Christmas Eve for the kids and adults who live on the streets. These past couple of years they’ve prepared and delivered nearly 5,000 individually wrapped meals (beef, pork, chicken, rice, yucca, potato) along with a gift bag for each person. Being that I have a truck, I’ve spent the past couple of Decembers hauling ovens/freezers/giant ten foot bags of Fruit Loopy snack food they have here (every year I try to remember to bring my camera on the days I haul the Fruit Loops…and every year I forget. Just try to imagine eight or nine, ten foot long bags towering over my truck. We make sure they’re well strapped in…).

This year the group from Canada (Caronport, Sk) arrived just in time to help cook, prepare the packaged meals and distribute them. The following is an excerpt from the letter Corina sent out in January…

“Can you imagine how many hands come togther to make this happen? We made up about 4,800 little gift bads…cooked 900 pounds of rice… 500 chickens… 800 kilos of port… 1100 pounds of potatoes… 30 some stalks of frying bananas… 125 round roasts… To peal the potatoes, prepare the pork, cook the rice, bake the meat, and prepare everything else, we had a group all the way from Caronport, Saskatchewan to help us….along side of people from churches, from the streets, kid’s homes, neighbours, volunteers and students… Wow…”

It is pretty amazing to have the chance to be a part of this. I enjoy it every year. Having lived in Santa Cruz for the past four years, I still find my eyes opened again to the needs and suffering that people experience here.

I figured the best way to share the experience would be to show you some pictures….

Assembly line preparing the meals…

The answer to the age old question, “Where’s the beef?!”

Even after a long day of work, there were lots of smiling faces…

Arriving at our first location…this was a field where some
of the worst drug addicts in the city lived…

Passing out meals and glasses of juice (which, for some reason, was a big dea!).
Along with their meal, each person got a little gift bag with some candy and
a couple of small wrapped gifts they could open…

 
Meeting Daniel was a highlight for me.  His hand was cut and infected, so I pulled out
the first-aid kit I keep in my truck, and Paul and I cleaned and bandaged the wound. 
We talked with him for awhile, and it was obvious that this young guy hadn’t spent
his entire life on the streets (he had an education and spoke a bit of English). 
He was a polite, soft-hearted kid…and my heart was really saddened for him. 

It just makes me wonder what’s happened in his life to bring him to this point…

I’ll let Corina exlain about the next place we went…

“Years ago, I had been warned away from a wooded area…  The person I had gone looking
for begged me to please never come back… “Melena”, the feared man in charge, didn’t like
people just coming in… too many bad things could happen to me…  so I never went back… but
I’ve often thought about those addicts, hidden away in those bushes… unseen by society… in
their own dark world…  Now, this Christmas Marco was able to go there with a group of
young people from our church and from
Canada… “

Our last location was downtown close by the old bus terminal
where prostitutes, glue sniffers and street kids hang out…

While we waited for people to gather, a youth group from a local church
entertained the crowd with skits and music…

There were lots of smiling, happy faces…

Then we handed out the meals.  Corina describes the situation…

“After all the serving was done at El Jordan, I went with a group of people … 
I had “ordered” 50 plates… but in the end there were 20 extra, left over from another area
where the police had already shooed the street people away… When we arrived there were
only a few people gathered… but word spreads fast, and soon a crowd formed…
Guess how many people there were?  71…  Anibal, the father of the very first baby Corina,
came by at the very end… and I think he was the only one that didn’t get any food…”

Heidi with one of the prostitute ladies she knows, and her new born baby…

A few more smiling faces…

“Christmas on the Streets” remains one of my favourite things I do here.  It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the unconditional love of Christ to a people who have seldom, if ever, received love of any kind.

I’m going to sign off with the last part of Corina’s letter….

“My rounds were done…  “Christmas on the Streets” was over… I dropped my companions off at their houses… It was 10 p.m. and I was ready for bed after being up and at it for two full days and a night…  BUT… I had three plates left over from the meals I had “ordered” for the families on the outskirts…

Maybe I’d find someone along the way to give them to… but no one really “stuck out”…  Lots of people were hanging around the round-abouts… but they always get showered with little presents and food at Christmas time by people who are trying to appease their consciences or do their “good deed” for the season…

I considered just going home to bed… It was justifiable… I had worked long enough…  But then the three plates of food would go bad…  They were for someone…  But who???

I sighed and turned away from home towards the market…  There’d be someone there…

…but the market was filled with people… the traffic was horrible… and I definitely didn’t feel like getting stuck in the middle of it…

I thought… “Well, I tried.”  As I turned towards home… I saw a lady walking alone…with a huge bundle on her back…  Maybe she was the one!

I got out of the truck and when she looked up at me I was taken aback… She had a very soft looking face… not like a suffering, hungry face at all… This lady didn’t need those meals!!!  She might even be offended by the offer!!!  …but it was too late to retreat… “Ummm…  I have some meals that I don’t want to go to waste… I wondered if you might want one… or know someone who might need them?”

The lady’s eyes softened even more… and looked at me almost incredulously… but not offended in the least…  I could barely believe her response… “God sent you…” … “The Father knows when one of His children is hungry…”  She was on her way home that Christmas night… tired… hungry… a lady who looks after two children that hang out in the market…  If God sees and cares for a sparrow that falls to the ground… how much more does He care for us? 

Enough to send us a reminder of His love and care for us…”