GO! Great Leap, Day One

Waystation: The Grand Canyon.. Here's a brief review of the days leading up to the Great Leap:

Day -4: Picked up my thesis from the bookbinder, copies to Vanguard, major libraries and major scholars on the letter of Jude.

.. Day -3: Commencement exercises at Vanguard. Friends and family members came from all over, including St. James and St. Davids. Here's my daughter Amber, a recent grad herself, with a B.A. in biology and plant science.
Day -2: Attended church at St. James; drove to Indian Wells to drop off most of my theological library in Mom's garage.
Day -1: To the printer with the final galleys of The Catholic Apostolic Church in America, edited by my mother and published for her by me.

Day Zero: Six a.m. bible study at St. James. Loaded my entire apartment (that is, my 9 by 12 room) into my car. Evening small group; prayers and sendoff.

Great Leap Day 1: Wednesday May 10, 30 minutes after midnight: Got the security deposit back from my landlord, aired up the tires (I'm packing quite a bit of weight), and hit the highway. Slept in the car at a roadside rest; arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at 1:00 in the afternoon. .

. The view from the South Rim humbles the soul. What hath God Wrought? Waves of joy washed over me, and I felt like bursting out laughing--or crying.

What a mighty God we have! What a loving God we have! .. Here's a view of the South Rim, where I landed one of the coveted overnight hiking permits for the following day, Thursday.

.. This is Bright Angel Trail, which I will have to share with the mule trains.

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Here is one of the mule-borne parties coming up the trail Wednesday afternoon.

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I'll hike down Bright Angel in the morning, and camp overnight at Indian Gardens.

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Indian Gardens is in the grove of green trees at the center of the photo below.

An Edenic pastoral surprise awaited me there. .

. Beyond Indian Gardens you can see the trail which leads to Plateau Point, at the edge of the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon. From this point there are sheer cliffs plunging 800 feet straight down to the Colorado River. Three quite astounding and unexpected creatures waited for me there. Again I slept in the car, this time in the parking lot of the South Rim.

To see the Next Post in the Great Leap series,
CLICK HERE: There... (but not yet Back Again).

Pre-Leap #2: Get Set!

In April 2006, after four solid months of sitting in front of my computer moving nothing but my fingers (and gaining 20 pounds of paunch), I successfully defended my thesis, Jude and the Scoffers. Graduation was not until May. One month of time off! .. With the extra time off, I lead a team from St. James on a mission/relief trip to New Orleans. Here is the "Moonwalk" in New Orleans along the Mississippi River.

The six of us from St. James pitched in at Annunciation's relief center, handing out everything from dustmasks to diapers. .. This is the Annunciation campus, in the morning setting up the distribution center. The trailer with the cross is the "doublewide" where services and meetings were held; the trailer to its right held a temporary medical clinic; and the building above it is a former rectory. All this land was under 8 feet of water.

We also went out on assignment to muck out a house not far away. .. Here is the 81-year-old Fr. Cam (in the yellow hardhat) helping to muck out this house, which also had 8 feet of water in it. Fr. Cam and I drove his mini-pickup from California to Louisiana and back for this trip, 200-mile shifts, non-stop except for meals.

I borrowed Cam's truck and drove the 70 miles to Pass Christian, Mississippi, to visit Fr. James Giles at God's Katrina Kitchen. (GKK).. This is the GKK dining tent. At the time they were also operating a relief supplies distribution center. GKK was housing and feeding dozens of church mission groups who came to the Gulf Coast to muck out, clean up, and rebuild.

James and I drove out as far as you could go on the ruined Highway 90, approaching the ruined bridge to Bay St. Louis. .. Here we talked of many things, indeed, of cabbages and kings. James helped confirm for me my call to the order of deacons. Was this to be my new job site? I still did not know, but I was itchy as a frog on a lilypad in a thunderstorm. But first I had to go back to California for Graduation.

Pre-Leap #1: "On Your Marks!"

First Job Offer, near Emerald Isle, Lake Tahoe:
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In the fall of 2005 a former employer offered me a job managing a hotel complex in South Lake Tahoe, California. The job would be part-time, set-my-own-hours, plenty-of-time-to-write-my-book, and included a free four-room apartment. This was too good. I took two trips up to South Lake Tahoe to check it out. But alack, where's the ministry? The nearest ACN priest was 60 miles away in Reno, Nevada (a very lonely diocese for an ACN priest). Was this my new call? I checked my closet for a fleece to throw out. Didn't find one.

This was My World in Orange County, California:
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Three years in a nine-by-twelve room, bathroom down the hall. At this time I was hot and heavy into the research phase of my thesis, and needed a cart to lug books back and forth from the Vanguard library. The only thing that maintained my sanity was the window over my desk, looking out at the birds in the tree and the hummingbirds attracted to my feeder.

After Christmas, I went with the youth pastor of my church on an exploratory mission trip to New Orleans:
.My second job offer was from the rector of these church-folk in New Orleans: No pay, uncertain future, and a place to throw my sleeping bag. Sounded attractive. Still couldn't find my fleece to throw out

New Year's Eve, 2005 (never mind the date stamp):
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A busload of baptists arrived from North Carolina and I went with them and "Lance" from the relief center. Lance carried his 9-foot cross (with the wheel in the tail), all of us carried copies of A Letter From God to hand out, and we walked down Bourbon Street handing out tracts, praying with people, and singing hymns. On New Year's Eve. At Midnight. On Bourbon Street.

The Great Leap

This post serves to introduce a series of posts coming up, which will give me an opportunity to publish a few photos I took on my journey from Southern California (where I'm from) to South Mississippi (where I'm at). But why "The Great Leap"? To explain that, I'll have to get just a little bit autobiographical.

For nine years I was a student: 3 years with Victory Outreach collecting all the academic certificates and diplomas they could muster; 3 years with the Latin American Bible Institute and with Vanguard University of Southern California, collecting a B.A. in Religion/Ministry; then 3 more years with Vanguard, collecting an M.A. in Religion/Biblical Studies, and publishing my 277-page thesis, Jude and the Scoffers.

Along the way I served as director of a Victory Outreach men's rehabilitation home for a year, and then as the assistant pastor of a storefront Assemblies of God church in Skid Row Los Angeles, for two years. But by the time I received the M.A., I had been out of active ministry for four years.

What did God want me to do? Where did God want me to go? I had gone back to the church of my roots (Episcopal) and discovered what I thought to be an oxymoron, an evangelical Episcopal church. I asked the advice of Fr. Richard Menees, the assistant rector, and he recommended that I check out Church Army USA, telling me, "They take in misfits."

So that begins my story. Church Army USA headquarters was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; their biggest "base of evangelism" was in Branson-Missouri, and they had an outpost doing Katrina relief in Pass Christian, Mississippi. I was determined to visit all three to check them out, and I had an ancient Mazda MPV to get me there. My prayer was that God would speak to me along the way, answering my questions: "What to do? Where to go?" I was jumping from what I'd known for nine years, off into the unknown: The Great Leap.

I'll try to post every day or so; Watch this space!

California Dreamin'

Thanks to a gracious and generous gift from the Free Church of the Annunciation in New Orleans, I will be able to travel to California next month to visit my equipping church, Saint James Newport Beach, and possibly my daughter and even my sons. On the return trip, I will swing through Paradise, California to visit my sister and my 91-year-old mother, Alma. God willing, I'll be departing Mississippi on October 11, returning October 23.

Here in Mississippi I've been developing relationships with two of the folks working for the county. The chaplain at the county jail is interested in the Church Army Gulf Coast program as an aftercare resource for released detainees, and he has already approached some of them to see if they would be a fit for what we have here. The public defender is also interested in the program, and said that he would be talking to some of the judges about the possibility of using our resources to assist those going through Drug Court. In the meantime, we are waiting for God to send us the next person for the NoAH project.

Otherwise, it looks to be a slow month here. God's Kitchen (the 501c3 organization over the now-closed God's Katrina Kitchen) has a team of volunteers from Vision Quest who arrived last night for a week's stay, but after they leave, few volunteers are expected for over a month. We'll be going into vacation mode here while everyone else is at work or school, and when their vacations start up again in November, we'll be back to work here.

Over the next week or two, I'll be posting a reprise of the GREAT LEAP, the journey that took me from California to Mississippi. I have a few great photos (Grand Canyon, etc.) that I'd like to share with all of you. Keep checking the blog every few days; it should be interesting.

Thanks for all of your support. This would not be possible without those of you (churches and individuals) who have sent encouragement for me and finances for the ministry. If any others of you would like to support this ministry, the directions are in the sidebar. Monies donated through Church Army USA are used for ministry needs only, and not for my personal support.

Thanks again,

Rolin.

ps: About the photo: If anyone has seen any ice floes floating past California lately, let me know. On this reversal of the GREAT LEAP, I'll be looking for a few days of cooler weather.

Battle of the Briar Patch

Our Sanctuary site holds an unwanted mystery bonus, which attacked me twice, plus one of the Vision Quest youths. No one has seen any poison ivy, nor poison oak, nor even any Virginia creeper. Yet the two of us had a nasty, itching rash break out, diagnosed as poison ivy/etc. by the medics.

My suspicion centers on this particular
specimen. It is a light, climbing, clinging vine, similar to wild grapevine but thinner and less woody stems. It has spines along the stems as tough as rose thorns.

One of these vines reached out and grabbed me (it seemed), and leafy dust fell that felt like tiny pop-rocks (remember that candy?) going off on the back of my hand. Three days later I was under a 7-day steroid therapy. I sure would like to put a name to this my enemy.

Anyone got any ideas?

NoAH, Jacob and Joshua: the Program

PROLOGUE:

I had to pinch myself every morning. Over the last two months, the new guys in the NoAH project were doing so well that James and I could hardly believe it. Perhaps it was the ninth set of modifications in how the program operates. Perhaps it was the difference in the new people coming in. Perhaps it was the modifications God has been working inside me as he challenges me again and again. More likely, it was all of the above, and then some. God took us to a new baby-step up the ladder.

Van and Freddie, both professional cooks, came into NoAH just when God's Katrina Kitchen really-really needed a cook or two. They were determined that they were not going to go around again on that cycle of addiction that they had been caught up in for way too long. And they jumped into the Camp Avenue kitchen operations like seasoned professionals. Van and Terry were to become the second and third successful graduates from the 60-day NoAH project.

Van especially seemed to have a knack for working with people, and for getting along even with difficult people. (Do we have difficult folk come through here? You bet.) This week I listened to Van counseling one of the other workers here, and thought, "Wow. I wish I could talk like that." But Van knows that he still needs much more grounding before he can be sure of long term success against his former drug life.

The air around Freddie sniffed like a man who was called to preach--and had been avoiding the call for a long, long time. His transformation from street-based drug user to budding preacher astounded not only himself, but all the people he had known on the street. His sermon at the Camp Avenue nightly worship service was powerful, as he described his new direction and his steely determination. But there was still a certain broken-ness lacking; that missing limp that Jacob carried all his life after he wrestled with God.

Terry came in three weeks later, and slipped smoothly into Kitchen life as Van's assistant and dishwasher. But like most new NoAH members, he soon found he had to deal with the real issues in his life. His street life as an alcoholic mendicant morphed into a camp life as an ailing mendicant. Eventually he revealed that Terry was not even his real name.

Terry left us this Monday, holding a bus ticket to Vicksburg, Mississippi where his parents live. His goal had been to get sober so that he could return home, and the bus ticket would take him to a family that would hold him accountable. The former Terry, reclaiming his real name, left holding a 30-day sobriety chip in his pocket from Alcoholics Anonymous.

Freddie left us this Sunday, returning to help the mother of his youngest daughter through difficult circumstances, and determined to use his skills as a senior cook to pay his child support, become the father that he wanted to be, and become the man that his recently deceased father had always wanted him to be. He called me last night, and wants to stay in an accountability relationship as he struggles to make it in the culture where he never made it before. If we had the staff in place to open a Sober Living House, Freddie would be a prime candidate to move in.

Van is staying on. As he puts it "I ain't going nowhere." With the recommendation of Gabe, our former head of cooking operations, and with the support of James, Van was offered and accepted the position of head of cooking operations for God's Kitchen. Also, he especially wants to stay on for the next phase of the Church Army Gulf Coast Life Transformation program, the Jacob project.

THURSDAY MORNING:
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Van has various portable grills and stoves available to him to use outside at the Sanctuary, and he has begun to use the upstairs kitchen in the Mansion. This morning he had four volunteers from the Vision Quest team help him prepare breakfast here.
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Vision Quest's 24-member team arrived late Sunday night, and has immediately set to work. The day for these young people often begins with vigorous calisthenic exercises, and with "circling up" to share and receive direction.

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Vision Quest, like Church Army Gulf Coast, also has a goal of life transformation. They work with teenage men and women who have had problems coping with society or have fallen afoul of alcohol, drugs, or the legal system.
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Van is working with a four-person team of Vision Quest teens assigned to him for cooking, washing, and cleaning up. Here is Van taking a break on the upstairs screened porch of the Mystery Mansion after breakfast operations have been completed.
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EPILOGUE:

The NoAH project kicks off the year-long Life Transformation program with an intensive 60 days of 12-step classes, Bible studies, worship and accountability. The next phase is the Jacob project; five months of transformation as we wrestle with who we have been, wrestle with who we must be, and inbetween these, wrestle with God until he gives us our blessing--and our holy limp. Completing the year is the Joshua project, five months in which, having found who we are and having chosen whom we will serve, we prepare to re-enter society and to join in Christian fellowship as we go forth to claim the land that God has promised us.

I have been talking lately with the Chaplain at the Harrison County detention center, where he runs a pull-out program for inmates based on spirituality and the Bible. He has been looking for places to send his people for after-care, and I suspect soon that he will have a candidate or two for us to interview for the NoAH project. All in God's time.

Every few months, God cleans house here at Church Army Gulf Coast. Then shortly, He sends us new people. Each time we learn. Each time we move up to a new level, one baby step at a time.

God is getting ready to take us up to next baby step.
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Serving from the Sanctuary

Church Army Gulf Coast lives on!
We're still working, still watching God transform lives, and still working alongside God's Kitchen, the umbrella organization over the former God's Katrina Kitchen.
Here are some photos of the not-yet-complete evacuation from our Camp Avenue site:
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While the signature red-and-white dining tent came down July 31, it was a few days later before the kitchen's cooking canopy could be disassembled and moved into storage.

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James drove the Barney Bus off to its storage site, while Ray and Steve and a full crew of helpers moved the volunteers' cabins two at a time. Here we see Cabin One, the former home of Church Army's NoAH program (and my home also) loaded and ready to move to storage.

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With all the cabins moved into storage, the former volunteer housing site begins to take on a desolate look. The queen of James' sunflower garden looks on unperturbed, while six of God's Kitchen permanent staff remain housed in trailers on Camp Avenue.

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Meanwhile, NoAH project volunteers Van, Freddie, and Terry prepared the first meal for the first team of volunteers to be housed at the Sanctuary.

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This team was housed for a week at the undisclosed location of the Sanctuary in the Mystery Mansion, which is also the site of the Clubhouse (below) which now houses the Church Army Gulf Coast life transformation program.

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In the upcoming post I'll update y'all (I've been down south too long) on the exciting things going on with the NoAH project, and the newly named Jacob and Joshua projects. Stay tuned!

Bad Night Out

Last Sunday I was determined to get out and go camping, despite (or because of) all the turmoil involved in moving from one home to another. Besides, it had been so long since I have gotten out hiking that my legs had stiffened up to the point that I was hobbling around half lame.
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Around the Sanctuary (our new home) lies dozens if not hundreds of acres of woods. "I'll go for a backpacking hike right here!", I thought. Right.
Between the underbrush and the Katrina-felled trees, hiking (as you and I think of it) was out of the question, especially backpacking my tent, food, kitchen, bedroll, etc.
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Once I was truly into the woods, I made only about 50 yards headway before I was worn out and confused. I picked this lovely clearing (?) to pitch my tent.
I did manage to cook a meal (ham&rice pilaf), and settled in to rededicate myself to writing in my sadly neglected journal, while waiting for nightfall and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.

Alas! The sky was overcast all night with nary a star to see, let alone a hint of a shooting star.

And Alack! I waited for the night to cool me off from the 98 degree temperature (and 110 degree heat index), but not a whiff of wind was stirring. In the morning when I put my shirt back on, it was still just as soaked with sweat as it had been when I took it off.
This was not one of my better camping experiences. Perhaps better than the time I waited out a two-day blizzard under a tarp, but not by much.
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But I have not given up. I left my tent and sleeping bag behind, carefully marking the trees on my outward trail, lest I should never see my gear again. I'll give it a try again soon, for the night-time temperature is now dipping into the frigid (brrr!) high 70's.

Missing Tent; Noah's Cottage; Mystery Mansion

On July 31, 2007, God's Katrina Kitchen served its last meal to the general public and took down its signature red-and-white tent.

Dear friends, miracles continue to happen on the Gulf Coast. Here are three items of breaking news (and private disclosures) of events over the last few days: 1) GKK's last meal; 2) NoAH's new and undisclosed location; and 3) the Mystery Mansion which will house Katrina volunteers for a time.

The Missing Tent:
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About mid-day July 31, kitchen volunteers took down the red-and-white striped tent that has been the landmark for the GKK feeding facility for almost two years. The cross that sat behind the lectern in the tent still calls out, Cast Your Burdens Here.

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With most of the tables folded up, volunteers sat in a circle on the concrete to eat their luncheon meal. Strong showers visited us during the evening meal, when volunteers and public alike huddled inside the kitchen with the cooks.

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The press corps has been near and among us constantly: here a reporter for the SunHerald wraps up her 3-day visit talking with visitors to the Kitchen. If her story appears online, I will post it here.

*NEWS FLASH* On Tuesday, WLOX TV did a story on the shutdown which included an interview with our own NoAH volunteer Van. That video may be found here:
http://www.wlox.com/global/video/popup/pop_player.asp?LaunchPageAdTag=Homepage&ClipID1=1632473&h1=Toni%20Miles%20Reports%20On%20Last%20Meal%20At%20God%27s%20Katrina%20Kitchen&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=134234&activePane=playlist&playerVersion=1&hostPageUrl=http%3A//www.wlox.com/&rnd=76796291
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Meanwhile, across the street the permanent staff was loading up the first of the volunteer bunk houses to be moved into storage on a local church property, until they can be pressed into use under the ministry umbrella of that local church.

A Cottage for Noah:
Little more than a week ago, Fr. James told me that they'd been looking at a site where one could house some 50-60 volunteers already scheduled through the month of August, and that (get this) there were one or two buildings on the site that could be converted into cottages to house the NoAH program.
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On my first visit there, the property seemed like an overgrown jungle. Here is the cottage being prepared for us (dead center of the photo, really!), hidden by the bushes.

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The building consists of two rooms, one quite large and the other a former garage. Drywall was already in the first room, and the second was waiting to be righted, for the hurricane had tilted the endwall six inches off center.

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By the next day, volunteers had painted the first room, insulated the second room, and had scurried about to find a large and beautiful window to add grace and light to the building.

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Then by the following day they had righted the building and begun framing in a wall in place of the former garage doors. All of the buildings on this site had 12 feet of water in them during Katrina.

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The Mystery Mansion:
The most spectacular building on the site is a large lodge, which I have begun to call the Mystery Mansion. Other volunteers have dubbed the entire site The Sanctuary.
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The downstairs may be used to house 50 or 60 Katrina relief volunteers at a time, while the upstairs can be used for overflow.

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Between the house and the garage is a large open air pavilion, where volunteers can be fed out of the rain. (Dinner on Tuesday was almost rained out without the tent.)

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Here is a large interior room of the lodge graced by a fireplace.

The lumber on the floor is the makings of bunkbeds that have been disassembled and moved from the Camp Avenue site.

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The back window of the Mystery Mansion opens onto a spectacular veranda, which may indeed earn this property the title of Sanctuary.

We're hoping to have NoAH moved into the cottage and have the volunteer feeding operations up and running at the new site this week. Stay tuned.