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.

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!

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

Downtown Live!!

Yo!
I am downtown, live and in person!!
I had to ride around a little bit to let everyone know that BASIC won't be downtown next weekend but the weekend after. pluss I wanted to blow off a little stress on the ole trusty steed. So, I saw a goodly number of people and I handed out a bunch of the copies of the Gospel of John. I've had a bunch kinda locked up for a while and rediscovered them. I guess it was kinda my way of being sorry for not having food and clothes, although I have no reason to feel that way. I do long for a change from the ordinary. Sometimes I wonder if I'm building the right relationships. So much of what BASIC does right now is meet "right now" needs. I kinda get frustrated. It's good to ride when I think about such things because it is easy for me to forget here i am going the in the world. Helps me see. Plus traffic keeps me on my toes...

Well, I'm at Panera, and my truck is a little ways from here. I must go so I can get home. Hopefully, that means an earlier bed time, but I also discovered the presentation I am giving Tuesday has been deleted! That means I have to rewrite it. Yuck.

I love you all!
GB HOYT

God Loves You, me, Tina, and Steve!

Back from downtown.
Here I am, I didn't get too worked up, but I did yell. I wonder if you can guess the parts of the sermon that I yelled. I'll give you a hint. I really don't think that some things are fair...
;-)
Anywho. I served about twenty-four people Sunday Nite, me and God, and some of them helped eveyone. Things went really well. I arrived about six downtown, and was done by seven. I call that a perfect plan, even though it rained lightly the entire time. Somehow, the rain was enough to feel appropriate considering the subject matter of the sermon.
Crazy...
Let me give you an interesting God story about today. In my travels, I have to decide by the time I get to the end of my street tolls or no tolls. Paying tolls means I save half an hour sometimes in travel time. Not paying tolls means I save about $3.50. Hmmm. It's not really an issue right now, because I don't have any toll money!!! :-D Hooray for simplicity!
In my simplicity, I prepared to exit highway 98 onto I-4, and I spied some hitch hikers. Two of them to be precise, a man and a woman.
WARNING!!! I am not about to advocate picking up hitch hikers. There are just too many way to creepy Urban Legends to just go picking them up. I knew them both!!! I also knew they were homeless I recognized Tina Bishop right away. She's small... I didn't recognize Steve first off though. They are the ones mentioned in the title of the post. They had come to Lakeland for the weekend to give Steve's Kids some good news and they were on their way back. Well, I was able to give them a ride to Orlando in the A/C. God has great timing.

So: Here are the prayer requests:
Jack Bishop: Everything
Adrian Hendy: Things get better
Cathy: Grandma
John Santrock: My Grandma
Nelson Daniels: Need Job, Place to stay.
Mona Thomas: To fight hunger and pneumonia while it continues to rain.
Steve: That we make it through another day.
David Fahrmer: For my mother and for our safety on the streets.
Robert Duncan: Pray for my mother.

Nearly fifty percent participation this week on the requests! Hey, that ain't bad...
So. Everyone have a good week, I'll have some more news later.
God Bless you!!
GB HOYT

All that you Can't Leave Behind...

According to U2, the answer to the thing you can't leave behind is love. While most people treat love as a trite thing that is solved by some mysterious feeling, a quiver in your liver as it were, I want you to think about something...
God commands us to love...
Why would He tell us to feel anything?
My point:
There is a choice in love! Who do you choose to love?

I have a couple of challenges, then we'll get to the homeless news:
Challenge number one: Find the homeless people in your community. No seriously, do nothing but find one homeless camp, or one street corner where you know homeless people congregate to fly signs or whatever.

Challenge number two: Find somebody to love!
Not the "I need romance " type, but make a conscious decision to love someone you don't know. Maybe you do know them, but you've had a strained relationship.
Post your resutls in the comments sections.

News:
Ok, BASIC is changing things up a little bit. God willing, we will start a small group in March, and that will be our main focus. We will meet the needs of the people more intensely at the small group. We will continue going downtown on a monthly basis, but not weekly. God willing this will enable us to have more pants and things like that to hand out to everyone. Two weeks ago we went downtown to serve the homeless, and it went well. We had our usual group of Winter Parkians (if that's a real word) and also four young men from Florida Christian College. It was a great group.

Have fun with your assignments!
Next week Corey, Rafi and I are going to be getting el offico better organized. Man it would make a great community service opportunity to have someone who could get there a couple of times a week to make sure clothes were sorted...
hint, hint...

Later,
GB HOYT - your tardy positive activist...

Prayer Requests, Update on People, Future Plans

Interesting Sunday this last week.
Everything went pretty much the same as it's gone since we moved to the general location we are at right now. Only differences, we started a little earlier, and we were back under the bridge and not in the fenced in area. Rafi and I travelled seperately, Rafi to First Christian Winter Park to get our helpers for the week, and I directly to downtown so as to find out where we are meeting. I was on my way to a potential spot, when I thought, "why don't i swing by the old haunts, just for kicks?" Low and behold, there were people there!
For the time being, OPD is letting people sleep there as long as they get out by the morning. We'll see how long that lasts. Something that disturbed me was someone (homeless or not I don't know) had graffitied one of the poles with a phrase that said "We shall not be governed" I don't know what that means... And that bothers me... Does it bother you?

Ok, we served about 50 people.
Here are the prayer requests.

Jack Bishop: "Yes Prayer for an opportunity."
Vincent * : "Strength, Power, Love for God!"
Thomas Tugman : "For Good Health"
Krystal Coleman: "Peace"
Sherri Phillips: "That my husband gets his promotion next month at work."
herbert Freeman: "Yes to lvoe Jesus"
Leon Stephene: "for a job"
Denise Henn: "my health"
John Mizell: "Pray that I have a better life with my new job."
Samantha Howell: "Get off the street."
Dee: "Wealth, Prosperity, Distinctfulness, Knowledge"

BASIC is going to change format soon! It was nice to have almost enough of the most needed things (Pants, socks, hygeine kits) for a change, and even a few shoes. The biggest reason why that was possible was because it's been 3 weeks since we last trekked downtown. That means we had enough time to collect things. Rafi and I have talked about starting a small group, all we have to do is put it together. If you are willing to have your home be opened to such a prospect, lemme know!

Your myspace lamewad (again) positive activist,
GB HOYT