Southern Californians Flock to Join Brethren at National Revival

It’s nothing new for the residents of the Los Angeles Mission to stand, surrounded by men, and pray for the power to change their lives.

At home, the recovering addicts gather each morning at 7 for an hour of group devotions in the shelter on skid row. And at every stop on a cross-country bus trek to Washington last week, they held a testimonial meeting, the leader selected randomly.

Saturday afternoon, however, the congregation was just a little bit bigger. OK, a lot bigger.

“Seeing everybody, this many people, have faith in one God--it’s real. No person would have this many people follow him,” exclaimed John Henderson, an admitted alcoholic, as he stood among hundreds of thousands of men at the national Promise Keepers rally.

“I never in my life seen this many people. I’m a believer,” said Henderson, who has been in the Los Angeles Mission’s “Fresh Start” program for five months.

Scattered among the vast throng of believers Saturday were hundreds like Henderson who had traveled from their homes in Southern California to “stand in the gap”--the rally’s motto.

Most prominent among them was Jack Hayford, pastor of Van Nuys’ Church on the Way, who served as master of ceremonies for the enormous event.

But Southern Californians were also to be found throughout the crowd that stretched almost the length of the National Mall between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

The Rev. Wiley S. Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park--who was convicted in July of four misdemeanors for letting 75 homeless people camp in his church’s parking lot and patio--brought his son, Wiley Jr., for a week of lobbying on Capitol Hill that led up to the rally.

At least 500 members of Saddleback Valley Community Church, a Lake Forest place of worship that draws 18,000 people each Sunday, took 11 airline flights before meeting up for a prayer banquet Friday night at the Marriott International Hotel near Dulles International Airport.

Similarly, 41 members of the Bel-Air Assembly of God found their way to the nation’s capital, getting a group rate of $400 for air fare and hotel, and arriving in time to join in the cleanup Friday of a District of Columbia school building.

And 37 men rolled through Flagstaff, Ariz.; Amarillo, Texas; and Memphis, Tenn., on a Trailways bus the Los Angeles Mission recently bought for $15,000. They slept on church floors, munched at McDonald’s restaurants and sang all the way for their Lord.

“It just feels like the frosting on the cake,” said Robert Barocio, 29, an admitted former cocaine and marijuana user who is scheduled to graduate from the mission’s yearlong program next month. “We’re working for our salvation and it’s just a big classroom here,” he said.

Though Promise Keepers is known as a largely white, middle-class evangelical movement, the men from the mission are mostly former street people with dark skin. Promise Keepers has, for years, given them free tickets or invited them to volunteer at Los Angeles rallies. When the call went out for the Washington gathering, mission chaplains began raising funds to make the trip possible.

In addition to its religious significance, the rally was the first taste of independence for many of the mission residents, who sign contracts promising to attend classes, adhere to strict rules and collect only a $10 gratuity for each week’s work during their stay.

Larry Nix, who said he lived for 4 1/2 years in a park near Fox Hills Mall before a police officer taught him to pray, proudly sported an “I visited the White House” button while Barocio snapped pictures to commemorate their first glimpse of the East Coast.

“It’s like a brand-new world to me,” the 40-year-old Nix said, tears in his eyes as those standing around him chanted “Holy, Holy, Holy” along with a leader seen on a giant TV screen. “Learning how to read the Bible, learning about God--I’m just so grateful.”

This weekend, his promise is to earn his high school diploma--he has overcome illiteracy through the mission’s classes--and become a “missionary” of God.

“I got on the bus, and I cried, just thanking him,” Nix said. “I came a long way. Four-and-a-half years . . . it really proves to me God is live and real.”

Traveling along Interstate 10 and Interstate 40, the men marveled at what they see as God’s glorious creations. With several guitars and even a keyboard along for the ride, the silver bus with an orange stripe often became a chorus of Christ’s praises.

And in true neighborliness, they swapped seats so no one had to spend too much time next to the lone toilet on board.

“If you talk to the guys, the one thing they’ll tell you is about the bathroom,” Duane Ross, one of six chaplains on the trip, said with a laugh. “It’s full and there’s no place to dump.”

After only one day in Washington--they arrived after 11 p.m. Friday and were scheduled to roll out at 5 a.m. today--the group planned to return along a more northern route, stopping in Louisville, Ky.; Kansas City, Mo.; Denver and possibly Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Holt Meyer, who graduated from the Fresh Start program in September, is planning to share the cross-country drive back home to Fullerton in a motor home with Ross’ daughter, Nancy McCandless, her husband Danny, and 9-year-old son Joshua.

“We thought it’d be a great opportunity for us to bond,” said Nancy McCandless. “I feel kind of funny walking down the street and there are tons of men around. [But] we’re a part of it in kind of an abstract way. I don’t feel left out at all; I just think it’s their place.”

Meyer, 39, said he was born in Seoul and abandoned at an orphanage called Holt, which gave him his name.

After coming to the United States, he said, he served in the Army but quickly got mired in cocaine and marijuana addiction after returning home.

Meyer said he was on and off drugs for two decades before wandering into the mission in March 1996, as he was on his way to buy drugs from a dealer across the street.

After completing Fresh Start and a five-month addendum, “Work Start,” Meyer recently launched his own landscaping business in Orange County, the equipment purchased largely by the McCandless family and other members of Faith Community Church of the Nazarene in Yorba Linda.

“The things I’m doing today are the things I started dreaming about in the mission, how normal it could be,” Meyer said, moments before taking Joshua for a walk to the Washington Monument. “I didn’t think I could afford it. It wasn’t feasible. It just happened. That, to me, is the power of God.”