Serving Up Food and Second Chances Enriches Helpers Too

Every Sunday afternoon, a group of us gather at the corner of Gower and Carlos in Hollywood to help bring our vision of Los Angeles another step closer to reality.

We make up a rainbow of races, cultures, languages and classes. Yet our differences hardly matter when we feed hungry men, women and children, cut their hair, wash their feet, give them clean clothes, refer them to shelters and offer them spiritual care.

This is the Lord’s Lighthouse, a laboratory for cross-cultural ministry staffed by volunteers on the sprawling campus of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

Some of us, like ministry Director Charles Suhayda, a former research scientist who worked with the poor in Asia, are experienced in working cross-culturally with the impoverished. Others are novices, learning as we go.

Each Sunday, about 30 volunteers prepare and serve dinner to more than 300 guests--for some their only hot meal of the week.

“This is the only place that I know of in L.A. where you sit down as you would in a restaurant and get served,” said Jack Hall, our chef extraordinaire, who with his wife, Miriam, leads the kitchen crew.

Hall, a former restaurant owner, has been cooking for our guests for nine years. He and Miriam, a records manager for a Beverly Hills law firm, spend most of their weekends preparing food for the Lord’s Lighthouse.

“The food is prepared the same way here as when I have guests in our home,” he says.

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It is more than food and social services that draw us here Sunday after Sunday. We feel like a family and sense God’s presence and love. No matter how broken some of our guests may be, we have faith that God, using us as his instruments, can heal them.

Bill “Big Bill” Skeahan, a former Hells Angel and heroin addict, says but for the Lord’s Lighthouse he would have been dead by now.

One Sunday afternoon six years ago, Big Bill, who stands 6-feet-5 and weighs 340 pounds, was shaking and crying uncontrollably from a bad reaction to impurities in the heroin. Two women volunteers rushed to him, held his big hands and prayed with him.

Soon thereafter, his costly drug habit put him in prison. But the love of the two, and other volunteers, had touched him so deeply that Big Bill no longer wanted drugs.

When he was released, the Lord’s Lighthouse family welcomed him with hugs, gave him an apron and suggested that he help as a volunteer.

“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” said Skeahan. “I never had a drug in my life--not heroin, not cocaine, not speed--that ever made me feel as tranquil and as calm as the feeling I get after serving at the Lord’s Lighthouse.”

Some of our more dedicated volunteers are former guests, such as single mother Star Demry and business executive Harden Walker.

Eight years ago, Demry was a homeless, jobless single mother with a 9-year-old son. A combination of her parents’ deaths and a divorce had put her out on the street. These days she is preparing to take the state exam for medical assistants. “I went from one side of the line to the other side,” she said, with a big smile. Her goal is to become a licensed vocational nurse.

Walker, who owns an executive recruiting agency in the mid-Wilshire district, fell on hard times in 1992 after he was shot several times and robbed in Long Beach. He says he regained his health from being fed physically and spiritually at the Lord’s Lighthouse.

“This is a special place to me,” he said.

Me too.

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Before I joined, most of my friends were busy professionals within my socioeconomic class. My idea of contributing to charities consisted of writing checks.

Four years later, I have friends from all walks of life. They have broadened my world and blessed me with their fellowship. They have taught me, too, that there is no substitute for hands-on, personal involvement.

That hit home last winter as I tried to place a homeless guest named Alfonso in temporary housing on a Sunday evening when the shelters were full and the phones went unanswered.

After calling what seemed like an endless list of agencies, I finally located one in South-Central that had an available bed.

I quickly wrote down the address and bus instructions and gave them to Alfonso. He took the piece of paper, but repeatedly asked for the name and address of the shelter. He could not read. We repeated the address until he memorized it.

Later that night, I called to check whether he had reached the shelter.

“He is here and doing just fine,” said the woman at the other end of the line. “Do you want to talk to him?”

Alfonso assured me that he was comfortable and was grateful to be there.

When I called him a few days later, the news was even better.

“We’re going to have him stay here for a month while he looks for work,” the woman said.

When I heard Alfonso was putting his handyman’s skills to work, it made my day.

I can’t think of another place I’d rather be on a Sunday afternoon than the corner of Gower and Carlos. I experience fresh hope every time I put on my apron and comfortable shoes and head for the Lord’s Lighthouse.