July 31st-August 1st

July 31st, 2006 5:15 a.m.

Wow! I can’t believe it’s 5:15 in the morning and in a few short long minutes I will be boarding my flight to Los Angeles. Man am I nervous! Nervous, scared, anxious, but none-the-less excited! I still feel like I am going to throw up though J! Well it’s that time, here I am Lord, use me, break me and mold me.

July 31st 5:45 p.m.

So I don’t think it’s a coiencidence that I sat by Cheyenne today. God she’s an amazing 10 year old girl, whose so on fire for You, Lord one of the first things out of her mouth was, “are you a Christian?” She then began telling me about the church that her grandfather planted in Pasadena. She even invited me to attend a church service there if my schedule permitted. Her church works with the homeless people in Pasadena, she was VERY excited when I told her why I was traveling to Los Angeles. When we got off the plane and were standing at the baggage claim, she said to me, God bless you, I hope you have a great trip. She was so sweet. I gave her my e-mail address on a pass along, there’s a part of me that hopes someday I’ll hear from her.

August 1st, 2006

I was so exhausted last night that I fell asleep in the middle of writing, I guess the time change and jet lag and the fact I had been up since 3:00 a.m. had something to do with that J!

I just wanted to thank you Lord for allowing me to be encouraged by Cheyenne, she’s amazing, and the fact that she’s only 10 and so on fire just makes me stand in awe of her!

So I arrived at the Dream Center around 3:30 PST, I checked in and went to my room, it wasn’t long before I was ready to explore! So I drove to Sunset Blvd., it’s crazy there, I went to Echo Park, it’s this huge beautiful park, with a fountain in the middle of the lake, a beautiful bridge and a nice garden. The best part on one side of the park they were filming a movie on the other they were doing a photo shoot for a magazine. Wow! Eventually I made my way to historic Filiponotown, it’s kind of cool there, lots of ethnic restaurants and stores, that’s where McArthur Park is located it appears to be just a bigger version of Echo Park, they were working on a movie there as well! I passed under a bridge and I saw the people of my heart; homelessness here is nothing like the homeless problem in D.C. or Baltimore, the people here sleep EVERYWHERE, they actually make homes out of shopping carts boxes and whatever else they can find. They put there mattresses so close to the road that if they rolled they would roll right into mass amounts of traffic, I quickly said a prayer for them and then continued on so it wouldn’t appear that I was gawking. It broke my heart and made me cry for them!

August 1st, 2006 7:57 a.m.

This morning started early, I was awake before 6:00 , I had showered and done my devotional and quiet time, I met a really awesome team from Virginia, W. Virginia and two girls from Maryland at breakfast this morning. We had breakfast in the “DC Diner” they turned the cafeteria into a 50’s style diner! After breakfast I came outside to do my quiet time, I have the most beautiful view of Hollywood Hills, but the best part is I have an eclectic view of the people who are at the Dream Center, from the DCD’s (Dream Center Disciples) to the teen DCD’s (Teen Dream Center Disciples) to the STM’s (Short term missionaries) to the people who actually live and work here.

There are hundreds of men and women in the DCD program, the number one rule is that we are not allowed to talk to them unless they speak to us. We can say hello, how are you, thank you and God Bless, but that’s pretty much it. They have them on a very intense schedule, they pretty much get up at the crack of dawn and work late into the night. The men and women in the DCD program are so amazing and beautiful men and women.