Sometime in November of last year, I had a late dinner with Tony and Alex after work. The weather had already turned cool and the first freeze was coming. Tony suggested that we should maybe buy some blankets and hand them out to the homeless downtown. I loved the idea. My particular ministry is very church-oriented. If you come to my church, you see what I do; if you don’t, you won’t. I’m thrilled to serve the people who come to ACF, but it doesn’t always feel very much like being salt and light “of the world.” Serving the homeless sounded perfect. I had wanted to do more, ever since working on Willie’s House.
About a week or so later, Tony had a remarkable experience which led him to meet a homeless man by the name of Winston. They shared some coffee on a street corner near Parmer and N. Lamar, and Winston gave Tony the lowdown on the homeless in that area. He said there was a camp nearby where most of them stayed. Most of them made money “flying a sign on the rail” – translation: they panhandled on the IH-35 access road, at the intersection of Parmer Ln. That overpass also provided shelter when the weather was really bad. Tony took Winston to a nearby Wal-Mart and outfitted him with a new coat and some other supplies. When they got back to the corner, Tony asked Winston if there was anything he would like to eat. He considered the question for a moment and said, “I could really use me some stew.”
The next night, I went back out with Tony. In the back of Tony’s battered CR-V was a huge vat of stew that we had made from scratch in the church kitchen that day. Tony’s wife Karen had also made some cornbread. We stopped at Starbuck’s and bought a traveler of coffee. While we were waiting, the manager started chatting it up with us. When she found out what we were doing, she gave us a huge bag of their day-old pastries.
I should pause here and explain something about how we were approaching this ministry. Based upon a perfectly solid biblical principal, we weren’t going to tell anyone about what we were doing. The idea was to diminish any motivation except to be obedient to our faith and humbly serve the poor. We weren’t going to tell the church staff, we weren’t going to tell anyone from whom we bought food or supplies, and we really weren’t even going to tell the homeless were serving. Clearly, that wasn’t in God’s plan, because it fell apart quickly and when it did, the blessings spilled forth. It started at Starbuck’s that night. As soon as we buckled and told the manager what we were doing, she gave us food. Over the months, that has happened time and time again. Starbuck’s, Whataburger, and Sonic have either just given away food or given us deep discounts, because we told them the food was for the homeless. I never would have expected that from corporate chain restaurants, but they have been very generous.
Anyway, after we left Starbuck’s, we drove towards the same place on Parmer where Tony first saw Winston. I was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find anybody, but as we approached Lamar, we saw Winston exactly where Tony had seen him the night before. We pulled into a construction area on the corner and waved him over. He was ecstatic that Tony had kept his promise to come back out. He was so happy, I thought he might start dancing a jig, saying, “I told them you would come back, I told them!” We asked where everyone was and that was when we were first made aware of just how green we were. Winston explained that everyone was probably down for the night. I don’t know why we thought people would be hungry and in need of coffee that late at night. Maybe we thought people were going to bed hungry? In our experience, that’s not generally the case.
We stood and ate some stew with Winston and he told us about some of the other homeless in the area. He went across the street and into the woods, where they camped, but came back saying that he couldn’t find anyone else. At the time, he was particularly worried about one old fella who was sick. He had gout in one foot and the other foot was gangrenous from an incident with a stingray! He wouldn’t let the doctors take his foot, so it was looking grim for him. We never heard about that guy again.
We left Winston and since we had so much food, we decided to just drive down Lamar in the hopes we would find some homeless people to feed. We found one guy, but he had already eaten. He was interested in what we were doing and after we told him our idea, he smiled and said, “Two Guys and some Food.” He got it. No proselytizing. No Bibles. Just food. Just salt. It really was that simple and so, in that moment, he christened our ministry (even though it has grown well beyond just the two of us).
Very soon after that night, we found the real campground in that area and met dozens of homeless. It has been a wild ride so far and we hope to document some our adventures on the Two Guys and some Food website here.
Meanwhile, please pray for these new friends of mine, these brothers and sisters, the lost and addicted, the opportunistic and manipulative, the victims, the thieves, the drunk, the hungry, the down and out, the hobo poets, and the gentle tramps: Winston, Russell “Sparky” Jones, Hugo and his dog Princess, Sherry, Linda, Wilson, Tom, Todd, Isaiah, Grandville, Mustafa, and Suddenly. Yes, I know a fella named Suddenly.
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
– Matthew 25:40 (NIV)
Please pin, tweet, and share! Most importantly, let me know what you think in the comments below.
