Mind Death and the Art of Feeling Numb

There are so many things in this world that keep pulling you down. You got terrorists in Mumbai, poor retail sales on black Friday, gubbmint officials who start lame duck sessions when they are first elected, and who live on a diet of pork and cocktails. I tell you, it's not hard to be apathetic with all the junk that I see people walking around keeping to themselves. At least my kids are still sweet.

So here's what's been going on this week: I got real sick Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week recovering, and dealing with the after effects of being sicky sicky. Thanksgiving was pretty good, but I didn't eat as much as have eaten, didn't want to see it again. Gross, right? I did spend some time trowing balls into trees to recover other balls that thrown into trees. It was a vicious cycle that eventually required the use of a ladder and a polesaw.

The weather and my recover efforts conspired to keep me home yesterday, but Matty, Jess, Rico, Steve, and others went downtown and handed out foodbags or one item to help people get out of the weather quicker. He said there were "Literally 80 people waiting". Now that's odd to me because most of the guys know we can only serve forty. Meh, meet the needs, save the world. Next week hopefully things will be better, we are supposed to get a cool snap this week.

for prayer requests, pray for me, and everyone downtown this week during the weather. I've got some hackin' work to do this week. Lervly lervly.

One last thing, one of my former college room mates has started an outreach to people with HIV, Life with a Vision that I think will be an entirely worthwhile effort!

l8r g8r
GB HOYT, sick and tired of being sick, and tired.

Even When I Ain't there, There you Go!

Yo,
Didn't make it downtown this last week, but God's people did! Jess and Matty took some of the All-Stars downtown to help the homeless, and ministry happened. I love it! We even got some prayer requests:

Michael seaquist> Needs a good job
D.J.> To have others in need given help
jack Bishop> Jobs, Apartment Etc....
Desiree> For Gods will to be done in her life
Alphanso Ellis> Prayer to get off drugs and to be saved
James> Prayer for himself
Gregory Scott> Pray that he finds a full time job soon
Leon Johnson> Pray that he lives a more Christ like life.

Thanks guys for gettin' out there!
I received live updates via my inside man on the streets, and he informed me that everyone was grateful.
Things were well!

GB HOYT

I Can't Brain Today, I Have the Dumb

Work is pretty fast paced right now. We are in full on thanksgiving mode, which means late nites for me (*GROAN*) and tiredness in the morning. On the homefront, the girls are gettin' round and round...
what is happening to my hair. I'm noticing more grey.

So on the BASIC front, the press for pants continues. Got a pair? Give it to us!

So, since I'm hurting my brain by thinking too much I feel obligated to help you think as well. hehe.
here we go:
What about this whole evil thing?
Natural evil, man made evil, whatever kinda of evil you can think up.
Why is there evil in the world? I've heard the question asked so many times, it kinda bores me a little bit. I know people who've suffered, I have suffered myself. I address part of the problem in this post and it's still very valid today.
I have a new thing to add to my argument though.
Ok,
first read that post, come back, and you will understand what I'm saying here. Cause it's a gripe with people who don't get consequence.
People complain when God allows evil people like Hitler or Pol Pot to commit genocide, but when God does something about it, they complain about God committing the same crimes.
Punishment for harsh evil is harsh.
I get that.
why don't others??
here's the example:
What if i told you of a culture of drunken men routinely engaged in religious rape routinely engaged in warfare to spread their way of life upon the earth. They practiced slavery, took advantage of the less technologically advanced, and generally caused a ruckus. You know, they burned cities, killed babies, occasionally offering them to whatever idol they thought appropriate.
God punished them by telling the Israelites to kill them. They had their chance, they just didn't take it. Pull the plug.
God punished evil, and people hate Him for it.
God waits to punish, and the same people hate Him for it.
People are stupid, not God.
Somebody call me a jerk or something please, this is way to simple in my mind. I'm missing something obviously.
Help!
I need clarity.

Muddled and sleep deprived,
GB HOYT

Spot O' Cool Weather

Hello,
I guess the fall is officially here in Florida. It's cold this morning! It was starting to get chilly last night too. My hands actually got a lil' cold. I'm just glad the fish mobile has heat! Took a lil' while to run out of needs lists, i was kinda surprised. The BASIC All star crew took to the streets, and did their work well! Handed out a lot of jackets and other things. We need pants!
Can't get enough pants!
here's some prayer requests!

Stacy => "that I will be found faithful in Jesus Name"
Gregory Scott => "Pray for me that I may find or get a regular job real soon ok"
Stormie Knight => "Help make me a good christian in the faith, amen."
Luther Nelson => "Peace for the hurting ones"
Duck => "a Home"
Jack Bishop => "Pray that I find work ASAP"
James D. Kemp => "For my friend and I to make it to having a house and finally off the streets and stay off drugs"
Tony Wagner => "Oh, no sweat!"


Thank you!
GB HOYT!

Short Fall Rundown...

Ok,
This fall has been an *Amazing* time for BASIC. Some big things are happening and I am loving it!

First of all,
BASIC has hired some part time help! Jessica Brooks and Matt Walters now do a lot of the grunt work, like gettin' clothes sorted and sized, preppin' the fish mobile, and helping the services run smoothly and effectively.

Secondly,
Lotsa clothes are beginning to come in. A lady gave us a Bunch of jackets, just in time for the season, we'll be glad to get them to people who need them! Also, we just this week put out bins at Florida Christian College to collect blankets, boots, and socks. If you are reading this and you or someone you know goes there, please, stop by the Student Union Building, and make a donation! Or send someone in your place. I will say though, that we need pants!! Especially in the 34-38 inch waist range. Really really need those. Pants, can't get enough.

Thirdly,
Thanks to Matt, Jess, and the increase in clothing, we have been able to take people downtown every week the weather has allowed. I personally haven't been downtown every time, but someone has. That is the way it should be. I don't want this ministry to depend on my presence. I don't think it does. If BASIC is to really start helping people get off the streets, I'm going to need some free time to train small group leaders. We are going to start that in January.

i hope to be better about getting the prayer list posted online now. Feel free to make fun of me if I don't.

Love,
GB Hoyt

"Falling" behind...

Just a lil' seasonal Joke about my updating habits!
So,
This has been an exciting fall if you are involved at all with BASIC! We Have had a lot of help this fall, and I would say, that if we had about $250 more dollars in support a month, we could keep doin' this sort of thing well.

Matt Walters and Jessica Brooks have been helping us out! They are a real blessing. I'll have more to say later, but wanted to post these prayer requests before I got too busy this week.

Prayer requests:

Marlyn Lucas => "Angela Joshua, granddaughter"
Victor Washington => "Prayer for Angle"
Andrew Cook => "For Love"
James Sanders => "Pray to get myself together need a place to rent"
Willie Williams => "Strength"
Leon Johnson => "To let go and let God for work, a good job so I can go indoors to live"
David Truhn => "Job"
Willie Sims => "To get off the street"
Orlando De Jesus => "Family"
Jack Bishop => "Everything"
Danny Paul => "Pray for me to get off drugs and alchohol!"
Gregory Scott => "Pray that I may come upon a regular job real soon ok"
Jesse Morris => "For Protection"

Thanks for praying!
GB HOYT

If I Were a Carpenter...

(************atttentionsnsnsss!!!***********************)
don't forget to checkout my new randomness!


Yo,
so I went to Orlando yesterday with an agenda:

1. Plug hole in fishmobile gastank.
2. Board up windows.
3. Lock all doors.
4. hand out foodbags downtown.

Items one and three were accomplished with no problem. Item two is about 33% complete, one window is boarded, all the wood is cut, but I'm not satisfied with the way things are right now. It still has a few design kinks to work out and whatnots.

As for item four, which is arguably the most critical, mission mostly accomplished. I went downtown, handed out about 15 foodbags (and there were more than enough people to go around), and told everyone what was up. People were waiting so some people at least remembered when I said I would be back. There were even a fair number of new faces. That kinda surprised me, but I guess it goes to show the power of word of mouth.

Next week we have college kiddies to help out, ought to be interesting.
later guys,
GB Hoyt

Catfish are Jumpin and the Cotton is High

Summertime is almost over. We are at the peak of the hurricane season, students are back in school, homeless activists are being arrested in my "back yard", and my mom and dad are about under water. It's also been a pretty busy summer. First things first.
We took July and August off, as far as street ministry is concerned. Many of the people and churches who support us had things going on, and couldn't provide the necessary manpower to get everyone together. Even I took a much needed vacation. It's tough raisin' two kids, holding down two jobs, and trying to run a homeless mission on top of that. I need help! I get some every now and again, but what we really need is someone who can do this every week.

Hopefully, that can happen this year. I'm going to see if I can get a couple of college kids from Florida Christian College to take the ministry on a coupla days a week for pay. It's a lot to ask a college kid to give up a coupla days a week for free, and I don't mind shellin' out a little dough if it means that ministry can happen every week. I have a few things going on that keep me from doing ministry in Orlando the way it needs to be done, and I'd like some prayer in that regard.
1. My truck is about broke down. It's got over 180,000 miles on it, more than one ding, and a leaky head gasket. I have every confidence in the world that she'll leave me stranded one day, probably on my way to or from Orlando. I can't afford another car payment, and I can't afford all the repairs necessary. So mostly, I just need to take it easy right now, and be happy if I make it the 6.5 miles to and from work.
2. I had to take a second job. One day the truck will need replacin' and the girls will need to go to college, so I got a second "at home" job with a website developer. That's right, I'm a paid hacker! It's great work, but requires I spend time doing it, and that means my time to spend with my family is greatly impacted. These kids don't raise themselves you know.
3. There is a lot of work in Lakeland to do. I honestly feel guilty not doing more here. This is my community, I can't pretend that I'm connected to Orlando beyond ministering to homeless people once a week. If students were more involved with BASIC I would feel a lot better, and could do something useful here.

What do you think?

peace out!
GB HOYT

Yesterday.

Alright,
it's monday and i'm going to post on what happened yesterday downtown, first time all year, just about, hallelujah!

The fishmobile is back in service. Thank God. it's been out for a while now, but we are now using it again, even if it is a little ugly. The volunteers who helped pass stuff out certainly appreciated it, and the guys who received food and clothes, were happy that things went smoothly as well. All in all we had a great experience.

I spake on the necessity of quickly changing, before we are changed quickly, text was from 1 Corinthians 15:50 to the end of the chapter. It's important to understand that we must change to inherit the things that God as planned for us in the future. Flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.

As for prayer requests, I'll try to post those a little later in the week, the girls are in need of my constant supervision, so it's hard to pay attention to this blog and to them.

on other notes: my personal truck nears death. she ain't runnin' well, because we were just forced to buy another vehicle it will be difficult to replace the ole rabid mosquito, but alas, we still prevail.

So the daily chores call me away, look for another update later this week.
Oh, and if you are a nerd, checkout my latest attempts at being non sequitar: Scattagun experiment...
until then,
weeeeeeeee!
and God loves you,
G Brandon Hoyt

Up WAAAYYYY too Early...

there are certain pitfalls in life. Take this morning for instance, both my girls awoke at 4:30. Now, normally they are up at seven thirty, but today they hate me, so they were up really early. I don't know exactly why either, they just do. On most days that I work, I get off bout 1:30 am and am in bed by 2:30. Last nite i got home early, and went to bed bout midnite, thinking that I could get some sleep. I was wrong, here i am, with the same amount of sleep as normal. The girls are back asleep now, and am trying to do the same, even resorting to typing with my eyes closed. I'm not doing a bad job either from what I can tell. I'm going downtown later tonite, so i'll update later. supposedly i'll have lots of help.
GB HOYT
tired boy...

Spring Crowds

It's been fairly busy downtown, the city is currently facing some legal troubles, a homeless man who started a congregation has an important ruling about the city's no feeding in parks ban coming up soon. i don't know what exactly that will mean for us right away, other than we might move back to the park behind the library to do BASIC. The fishmobile should be back this weekend, i'm going to wash it sunday before we go downtown mostly because i'm tired of having it and not using it. i don't care if we have to load and unload it every week, it's gettin' used, dag nab it.


so that's a quick update!

love you all!
GBHOYT

Here I am!

Hello,
incase you have forgotten, this is Brandon Hoyt. I just had a baby, and while when we only had one, i could blog while she napped having two complicates things a little bit. but now the oldest is watching the little mermaid, so we should be alright.

sorry for the few capital letters, the shift key is the enter key right now, and it's a long story!

ok, so the quick update is this:
BASIC continues, i've been doing inner city work now for nine years, and still doin' what i can do. being daddy though, has made me cut back quite a bit, especially since i can't do ministry for a full time living. i've been working on getting a job that would pay more than the bills so that i don't have to worry about pay, but we'll just see about that. Right now that mostly involves learning computer programming, both in school and outside of the formal educational setting. If you know anyone who would be willing to hire a new C++ or Ruby on rails programmer, lemmee know. Also i'm slowly learning the trickier aspects of linux system administration, and learning some lessons the hard way as it were. Namely, get your disk partitioning space right when you install the operating system, but that's enough nerd talk, let's get to the ministry!!

We've been going downtown almost every week as BASIC since august of 2003, starting january this year, i've changed our weeks to the 2nd and 4th sundays of the month downtown, mainly cause i need the other sundays to get stuff ready in the office. if i could get about 3 or four volunteers to commit every week, we would be able to get everything done that we need to get done, and go downtown every week, but until then, we just don't have time. I need to go shopping, sort clothes, clean the office, update a database, and keep everyone informed all by myself. Also, so that we can really help more people, i have decided to limit the number of people we serve every week we go downtown to forty. That is a sustainable number for us to help, and make an impact in their lives on a deeper level.

We do have some prayer requests:
Dan Siegfried: Thank you Brandon!
Parice Wallace: Mom
M.L. Taylor: for myself, for alcohol
Nelson Daniels: need job!
Michael Wright: that i will be able to get a job
Jack Bishop: everything, sleeping bag.
Curtis Latimer: Family members
John Duck: I need a job and a home.
Krystal Coleman: that God continues to answer my prayers, forever.
James Wilson: gainful employment volunteer to lead to employment in field.
Sheral Ables: Pray that we all stay safe.
Dwight: pray for everyone.
Theresa McDonald: for my wedding and babies.
Shameekia Smith: yes my child and myself.

also, remember my family, we were in a car accident superbowl sunday and our car was totaled, the guy drove off, but the police caught up with him, and we still don't know if he has insurance or not. Kelly's leg received a little abrasion, and my back hurts a little, but the kids seem to be alright. So far it's been a yucky ordeal, our car was paid for, and now we'll have a car payment, but with prayer, and hope, we'll come to a swift resolution to the matter.

so thanks for listening!
keep the faith,
GB HOYT