Floating around the Internet....

Ok, so floating around the internet, this is one thing I've found: Scott Biao is 45 and Single. This article is by a fellow blogger, and is pertinent. Firstly because my wife Lurves the Reality shows, so I know she'll get a little fix from it.
My thoughts to add in:
Oh, the price we pay to be in a covenant relationship with the Father! It's not always easy to be the Faithful Bride that Christ calls us to be! For one thing, we are forced to admit that we've been doing it all wrong. Second we may have to leave everything behind to follow him!
Crazy...
Sacrifice for the sake of knowing God?
Really?
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot loose" - Jim Elliot.

25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14:25-33

GB HOYT -- everyday I must do as Scott did to Johnny, kiss myself on the cheek and tell myself to give myself a break.

Downtown this Coming Sunday...

Hello!
we are gettin' downtown this coming Sunday, to meet some needs, and also so I can scout out a community of homeless people near 50 and JYP. Supposedly there is a homeless camp somewhere around there. We shall see! I can't wait to have my new baby. This morning I am honestly excited about the prospect of having a tiny one again. Also, I can't wait for my KT to be a big sister.
(*Sigh*)

So, anyway, back to reality,
If you want to come downtown with us, feel free. We could use some extra help sunday, meet up at Southeast Christian Church, just south of Goldenrod and Curry Ford at 3pm.
Sofar, the only people confirmed coming are James, "The Gravy", McCrickard, and me! I think Rafi just started school ('bout time) and he needs to get A's!!! That way he can make lots of money, get lots of land, and give that land to people to live on!!!
Well,
Everyone take care. Lemme know if you can make it downtown,
GB HOYT

A Wing and a Prayer.

Ok,
So Sunday went well, the youth group from First Christian Church of Winter Park came along with some of our regulars from FCCWP. The weather fussed at us, showering us in some light ran, and forcing us to herd under the bus stop shelter. I briefly spoke about the woman caught in adultery in John chapter eight, and the kids wonderfully helped out and met some serious needs.
Here are the prayer requests we collected Sunday nite:

Debbie Czichos: to have a self life on my trips and journey one state to another
Larry McCoy: For a full time job
Leon Johnson: Pray for my soul to be free from demons and to do God's will
Alan Adkins: Yes have something wrong with both of my eyes.
Thersa McDonald: My brother Bob who was shot in hear Thursday night.
Mona Thomas: Lessen my burden I am not without grief for miscarriages due to untimely betrayal. I pray never to be without them in prayer.
Anthony Smith: Anthony
Campbell Ray: an apartment
Melanie Campbell: Apartment
Jean Weislogel: For everyone to have inner peace and a personal relationship with God.

We served about 26 people total. Many of them were new to me. I also saw some old faces if only briefly. I think the lightening we saw to the south of us was keeping some people away, but I expect we will start seeing more people in the near future.

That's BASIC in a nutshell... We are planning something for labor day weekend called "Labor day of Love" but it's still in the beginning stages, we'll let you know how things go with that.

In Christ,
G. Brandon Hoyt.

Sunday Bloody Sunday....

So,
No I'm not dead, and I haven't given up. I haven't committed to do anything in Lakeland yet, I have been doing things in Orlando...
Here's what's been going on:
In a nutshell.
In July the Family and I took a vacation to Cheneyville LA, that bustling little metropolis in central Louisiana that is the home of my roots. After that, we started going downtown almost every week. We're going (starting this week) to be meeting in a new spot. It's closer to downtown, and kinda already known by a lot of the homeless people. Come downtown and I'll show you where it is! It obeys the city's feeding ordinance, and is in a more public spot. I'll actually publish the prayer list Monday, because we haven't been seeing many people there really hasn't been much to report. I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. Kelly's going to have a baby, and the college kids I think will be good. A lot of the people who first started coming with Roland Howard's Intro to Evangelism class will be seniors this year, so I think we should be able to drum up some good support from the college kiddies...
that's me life fer now....
Take care,
GB HOYT

Six People, Six Helper, make 12 Together for the Glory of God.

We saw Six people this last sunday downtown. Not too many. We took the time to do a bible study on the book of John. It's three questions long, and you can participate by going to this website: The Pirate Preacher's Discussion on the Book of John Have fun answering the questions. If Orlando is going to change, it is going to change by the grace and power of God as God's people proclaim and act out the word of God.
Some prayer requests:
That we faithfully proclaim the word of God.
That the guys we saw last week get the work they need to find a place to live. Several had work, but needed it to not rain for a few days so they could do it!
Pray we can find a permanent place to meet downtown or in some area where there are homeless people. Also pray that we can find something to do with the homeless here in Lakeland, cause they be here too!!!
Thanks and God Bless,
GB HOYT.

Today and Last Week...

Ok, I feel like I can give an accurate account of my life last week and the few weeks before. On May 21st my wife and I got some scary news. She's pregnant and due early October, and the Dr. said the baby had fluid on her lungs. He said that this could be because of a hernia in her diaphram. Kelly (my wife) and I were scared. We were also prayerful. We decided to tell our family and friends, and soon a lot of people were praying for God's will to be done. I spent some time in God's word, and reviewed the story of the man born blind. The people in Jesus' day wondered at a person's maladies and thought many times that they were due to sin either in the life of the one who suffered or in the life of their parents. This is a common and typical response I think. I know I was kinda feelin' that way. You want to play the "if only" game. Well Jesus' response was interesting, he said that neither this man nor his parents sinned but it happened this way so that God could be glorified. I thought about that for a minute and remembered that in Romans we are promised that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:29). These ideas floated around in my head, and I began to become confident that somehow God was going to get a lot of thanks for this, and even if we got bad news, God would work it out to be something good.

We were scheduled for an appointment to see a leading doctor in fetal surgery, and a lot of people were praying for us. Thursday, we went to Tampa to see this doctor, and they took a full sonogram. I didn't know what to expect but I was confident that God would be there, and that he would take care of things. For some reason I kept expecting them to say things looked fine, even though there was no reason for such an expectation, everything I had read about so far suggested that the problem our unborn child was having was a serious problem that would require surgery, and could have some grave consequences. The Doctor who saw us came in, and did little sonogramming. The head guy came in and looked over her shoulder, and then she gave us the good news. There is nothing wrong. There is no fluid on our baby's lungs. Everything is good.
Thank God that He is good!
Your question for the week is, Does God still work miracles?


G. Brandon, Kelly, Katie, and Emma (current working first name for lil' bit)
bid you grace and peace!

And Just like that...

The Doctor tells us nothing is wrong that they can see, see your doctor in a week!!
Praise the Lord!!!!

Update from Tampa,

Hello,
Kelly and I are having lunch right now at a place called NOLA's in Tampa. We are waiting to go to the Dr. Keep praying for us and our baby!! Hopefully everything will turn out ok. I am hoping for the doctor to look at the ultrasound and say "Now why exactly are you here, cause everything looks fine on this end."
Love,
GB and Kelly Hoyt, your worried warriors...

Ok, Glad I got In on that...

Journey Christian Church has started an outreach program to downtown Orlando, and I'm glad I got to see part of what they do.I found out about the service through Ron Seiber, a student at Florida Christian College who was required to come downtown with BASIC about three years ago. Glad he remembered who I was.


The outreach Journey is doing is called Journey Downtown, and it seems to be aimed at reaching out to all the people downtown not just to homeless people. They served some pizza to the people at the corner of Jefferson and Magnolia and after that they gathered to worship and hear the word of God. I had to cut out just as they were starting the singing before I turned into a pumpkin. That was about eight o'clock. The funniest thing about going and sharing is that this was part three of a three part trial outreach. Apparently it's going well enough that they are going to continue the services starting in the fall on a weekly basis. At least they did something even if they can't return in the fall.


I also got to ride my bike around a little bit, and that was refreshing. Downtown is changing faster than I can keep up with it seems, and it's getting me a little crazy!
Our summer-through-the-new-year plans will be as follows: Get downtown 2 times month, the idea being that we've got to stay as close into contact with people as possible to hope at having a chance to get people what they need. We're going to raise $6000 for the first twenty weeks of 2008. The idea being starting with the first weekend in the new year, going downtown each sunday for the first twenty weeks without having to worry about having money, raising money, or getting supplies. It's kinda a test. If we can't raise the $6k by the new year, that may change our plans. It's something to pray about. Also keep praying for my wife's pregnancy. Yesterday we found out we're having another little girl, and there seem to be some complications. We go to see a specialist June 7th (unless we can wrangle an earlier date out of them!!) for some more testing and a consultation. Please pray for us, and our baby. There is no feeling quite like the helplessness of not being able to do anything about a problem your child is having. We'll have more updates as they are available.
Thanks and God Bless!!
GB HOYT

Against the Flow

Action against Orlando's Homeless continues. Consider Jackie's account of a recent attempt to get the mayor's attention. Things ought to be interesting for me this sunday. I hope it goes well. I've been keeping my eye out in Lakeland, looking for random chance encounters with homeless people. They seem a little more scattered out here, but maybe that's because It's a smaller area, and I'm just not seeing as many in general. I know a lot of guys in Orlando have been to Lakeland, but I repeat myself. I'm also looking for a second job! Maybe a local Christian book store.

Weekend Plans and Prayer Requests...

Haldo!
Got a weekend of downtown activity coming up. I plan on coordinating with Journey Christian Church. They apparently have been doing a once a month thing with homeless people. I didn't know about it, so we will have to see how things are going. Please pray that this will be a chance to learn and to also show what we have been doing.
Also, I've been doing a little websurfing and found a local guy that is off beat to say the least: Captain Lamewad is worth checking out. He is apparently pretty know to the blogosphere, but I think he wants to be a force for good in the local area. Looking at some of his links, I wonder if I know the man, cause we share some similar interests... We will let him remain anonymous for now... I'm not going to look too hard...

GB HOYT Out.

Breakin' it Down Oldschool...

AH Yes,
I remember going downtown for the first time and seeing a guy named Joe on a steam grate.

I remember asking him if he wanted some raisins...
Crazy what can happen in such a short time.
Still lotsa homeless people in Lakeland.
I hope everyone had a good mothers day.

GB HOYT

GASP!!! a new Post!!

Pardon my slacking, I haven't known what to say.
Sundays have been weird. The city of Orlando has pretty much determined that we will always have a hard time getting some consistancy in the lives of the homeless because they will always be hurried off when they inconviniance the city council. I don't know what it will take in that regard, other than a permanent meeting space. Until they get their act together though, I'm considering a change of venue so to speak. There are homeless people here in Lakeland where I live, and I think we'll start doing some work with them. I can invest a lot more time with a lot less effort, and if there is one thing that I know makes a difference it is the amount of time you spend with people that matters. The congregation where my wife and I currently worship has a youth minister that seems to be willing to see what happens in Orlando so we can start sometime here in Lakeland, I will keep you posted.

Until then,
GB HOYT

Great Experiences this Last Sunday...

Hello Everybody!
We had a good experience last nite, partially due to the great help we had, mostly to do with the goodness of God. Three groups participated with BASIC in a coordinated effort to meet the needs of Orlando's homeless. Randy Patterson led his small group,
Roland Howard brough a group of Spanish Speakers from Poinciana Christian Church, and some students from his Missions and Evangelism class came as well.
Students lead the worship time, and one of the students (Matt) gave the word. I was grateful to have the Poinciana group as well, because there are usually 4-6 guys downtown and that's all they really speak. Felix Estrada (Rafi's uncle) translated for a couple of guys from Hondouras. We received many prayer requests.

BASIC is hard to describe sometimes, but sometimes things just work. This was one of those nite when things just worked. Thank you Lord for success!

Here are the Prayer requests:

Michael Johnson: To get out of the streets
William Joseph: Pray for that I get right!
James Bell: Home
Telani Ward: Yes medically, spiritually needs, Ronnie Rubin Pray for him.
Ernest Owens: My beloved family
Yvette Gully-Murray: Thanks for being a spiritual force in the homeless lifes Jesus
bless your ministry, please continue to pray for our leadership for the Lord,
Amen: Love Yvette
Fred Halcomb: Pray to get better, Amen
Alex Noble: For me and my friends
Krystal Coleman: Peace
John Johnson: yes
Dannie: Prayer stay off drugs
David Walker: That we can get a place to live.
Jorge Zelaya: Mother in Honduras
Luis Mendoza: My family
Lynn Brannum: safe to California
Edmond Gray: Help get off drugs
Jimmy Gates: Yes Health Issues
Dee: Yes- I pray for porsperity

Thanks for your prayers,
GB HOYT- Your Positive Activist.

Back Downtown...

Well guys,
Strange things happened in the last week. I anticipated going to the office and downtown to do a little work, but that didn't work, Kelly's Uncle Don passed away last Thursday, and we went to the funeral. It's been hard on Kelly's family, especially her mom. Uncle Don was her only brother...
... so I didn't get downtown last weekend as I planned.
Sometimes I feel like I'm flying blind. I know that prayer helps, and I need yours.

So the plan for now is to do our thing on sunday, got some students from Florida Christian College coming.

Ought to be fun,
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

On the Necessasity of Gettin' it Right the First Time...

This article is a brief foray into the topic of "unspoiled", "perfect", "sinless". It stems in part from a desire to understand life, the universe, and everything, and more specifically, to be able to intelligently answer and understand questions like, why is there evil and sufferring in the world?
This is a broad subject and I take a very analytical approach to it. I like to see how all the dots connect to make the big picture, and I believe that an answer to suffering is contained in the fundamental essence of "The Way Things Are"(TWTA. One part of TWTA is to understand how Everything is put together. By Everything, I mean Everything, every rock, every galaxy every moment of history, every moment of present (and possible presents) and every moment of futures (and possible futures). Everything... (*Just for arguments sake, for now, let's consider the reality of everything possible as being different from the concept something possible.*) Check out this link if you are having a hard time thinking about Everything, I think it makes it crystal clear (if you are looking through an amythest at least...)
Everything is put together in such a fashion that we cannot see Everything. We can't see even the past, we experience it as it is. We cannot, but that doesn't mean that SomeOne isn't watching Everything right now. I believe God sees Everything. That's important because unless you see Everything, you can't understand TWTA.
See where this is going? We see TWTA in a fixed dimension, namely 4th dimensionally, We don't see things that happen in dimesions above and below. We can represent something 2 dimensional by drawing a line on a sheet of paper, but in reality, the line has length, width and depth. The closest one could come is the computer screen you are looking at right now, but once again, there is nothing two dimensional about the images on the screen, they don't even really exist! Light is emmanated from the screen from particles that have four dimensions, and without that critical fourth dimension, you couldn't see things change.
hmmm...
So God see Everything, so only He can Understand TWTA.
something to consider next time I think about blaming Him for something....

GBHOYT

First New Post of the Year??

Man am I slackin'!
I know there are just tonnes of people out there waitin' to hear what's newz.
here's the Newz:
BASIC once again is mobile. The City Beautiful has regulated us out of our old spot, so now we must make choices, find a new spot (Brian Nichols has given me a possible site) or change our strategy a little bit.
Rafi and I are gonna visit a "new spot" Sunday. Ought to be interesting. Rumor has it that OPD can't bother anyone there, we shall see.
Plan B (*I'm favoring as a more Plan A kinda option though...*)involves starting a small group and intensely meeting the needs of say, 5 homeless people over a period of 6 months, and limiting our larger feedings and clothing distributions to once a month.
We shall see about that too...
Jackie's post breaks my heart, but I will love mercy. Well, I don't know that it's merciful to lock someone up for life or not, I haven't thought about it deeply enough, seems to me that's it perpetuates Injustice to pay for a murderer to stay alive. Curiously enough though, God does seem to choose certain murderers to perform his will, even while smiting down (love that phrase!) others.
IN the end, we all need to learn what is good...
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? " Micah 6:8 ESV.
That is after all, why Jesus didn't stone the woman caught in adultery in John 8.
Think about that.
Clearly if we acted justly, these three boys would die, a life is the only thing that can pay for a life...
...but if we love kindness (other translations say "mercy")perhaps we can learn to be glad when "people get away with it".
Doing so requires that humble walk....
Also check out Jackie's post on what St. Pete is planning on doing.
Why the heck does Government always have to come up with the solution?


Love,
GB HOYT

If a picture is worth a thousand words...

What picture do you need to see to know what I'm trying to say?

What is frustrating to you? Is it looking out the window and seeing the same things again and again? Is it another roadside bombing in some country in the middle east? Perhaps injustice frustrates you, as you watch the news and hear about some guy shot by police as he was on the way to buy some more crack.

I get frustrated when the people who are elected choose to "deal with problems" by making it harder for me to do what God wants me to do.

I haven't posted in a while cause I don't know what to say. How does one say "hey this has to stop" to everyone who needs to hear it?
I just can't stand it anymore.
I'll have my picture for you to ponder up soon. I jsut need to think a little longer about what I want to say and do.
Sorry I've been a lamewad.