Sonrise Magazine

by Rick Michels

Taking the Love and Power of Jesus into the streets of Everett

Halie Johnson and Bob Allen minister to a homeless man outside Home Depot

The following is this reporter’s account of a night joining the Go Team in street ministry.

October 11, 8:57 PM: near the end of the outreach.  It had been an unseasonably warm evening and we were walking back to Sonrise after ~1.5 hours on the street. The Go Team outreach had come to an end. The weather, we all knew, was going to change, and the lack of shelter would be even more acute. Nicholas stood with his bicycle at the stop in front of Home Depot, waiting for the bus. With an unneeded bus ticket in my hand, I decided to give it away to a rider. That’s how we met Nicholas, who gratefully accepted it.

Nicholas is not a junkie, but he is a veteran of today’s fentanyl war zone. He spoke with sadness–and a tinge of indignation–of what is happening to his comrades in life. He has his own trauma, telling us he knew ten people, no longer alive, killed by the incoming barrage of fentanyl onto our streets.

One woman in particular, haunted Nicholas.

He told us how he met her at a friend’s house where they struck up a friendly relationship. While talking to her one day, he asked if she’d like to go get some food.

“ ‘Food?’ she says, ‘Yeah…Can we stop at your friend’s house so I can get some clothes?’ I said yeah. We get her clothes and go to Jack in the Box. I buy her some food and she goes in the bathroom … ’I’m gonna go do my makeup and change my clothes,’ she says.”

Nicholas’s tone turns somber, and his speech becomes halting as he continues to unburden the trauma of that day.

“I sit there waiting–sat there for an hour, waiting for her to come out.” Nicholas chokes out the next painful sentence. That next sentence … that his friend was not coming out to eat, was left unsaid.

“…How would I have known? I mean, she was 19 then … “Smoking hot,” he adds ... as if to say, ‘she didn’t look like a junkie. Just a very pretty girl would would spend a lot of time in the Ladies room to keep it that way…’ .”

After a pause, Nicholas continued, stumbling out with the memory: “If I, if I, if I would’ve known then … I would’ve done something. But I didn’t know. I mean, I probably, … I probably should have known it …“ his voice trailed off.

She was one of ten casualties, but the one he could have saved with a bit more boldness, and awareness. Nicholas’s halting voice exposed his regret.

Nicholas

Regret … there’s a lot of that on the street.

We’d just been in the war zone. Ground zero. Our work was ending for the night. We saw the human wreckage of the war. The “War on Drugs” is indeed a war, and along Evergreen Way, it appears that the enemy: “Drugs,” is winning. There are victories, to be sure. But there are also losses. In the battle for life, where daily pain is both physical and mental, “Drugs” offers a temporary relief. In return, it expects allegiance, fidelity … worship … and it comes with a price tag. Eventually, it wants your life, and with the advent of fentanyl, that day of reckoning might be that very day. So the Go Team goes to provide the antidote: the love of God through the power of the Name of Jesus.

If this is a war, then the Sonrise Go Team is a spiritual M*A*S*H unit. It’s mobile, and goes into the war zone outside our Home Depot neighbors as well as on Broadway in downtown Everett. You likely remember the hit TV series M*A*S*H, and if you don’t remember it, check out the reruns. M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or in this case, a Mobile Army (of Heaven’s) Spiritual Hospital. Every Tuesday evening, under the watchful eye of “Colonel” Dave Peterson, the MASH Unit is activated. The “spiritual doctors and nurses” are prepared, trained and equipped from the base camp of Sonrise.

Nicholas surprisingly knew of Sonrise and even said he would be at the 11 AM service the coming Sunday (although I haven’t seen him yet). Besides watching his generation die, he himself was suffering from a series of misfortunes: three stolen cars, lost jobs. He said he believes in Jesus, but we could tell his faith was flagging. Where is God in all this, we sensed him quietly asking God. We prayed for him to get a new beginning, and then suggested strongly that meant getting plugged into his friendly neighborhood church, Sonrise.

8 PM (an hour earlier): Meeting Nicholas was a divine encounter. I had earlier walked to the bus Kiosk there at the stop to purchase a ticket for Bryce (not his real name), a fellow so heavily under opiates he stood there mindlessly nodding at the gospel message while trying to pull up his trousers. But that simple task seemed impossible with the enemy fire ravaging his body in exchange for feeling numb for the moment. He didn’t argue with the gospel, but let us know that what he really wanted instead of eternal salvation at that moment was a couple bucks.

“What do you need it for,” I asked, not wanting to enable.

“A bus ticket,” he mumbled out, still working on his trousers. I wanted to help but wasn’t sure it would look right, reaching at his rear end in the front of Evergreen Way. Well, if I won’t reach under his butt, the least I could do was buy the poor lad a bus ticket.

I left him and went to the kiosk. The first machine wouldn’t accept my card so I tried the next.  It took far longer than it should have, but with ticket in hand, I headed back to where Bryce was, only to find him gone. I looked all around, amazed a guy who spent the last five minutes trying to get his pants up to his waist could disappear so quickly. The rest of the Go team had moved up the road, and I needed to catch up with them, so I shoved the ticket into my front pocket and moved on.

An hour and half later, heading back to Sonrise, we were walking past the bus stop. Knowing I never would use the ticket in my pocket, I decided to give it away rather than save it for the dryer lint trap. And that’s how we had met Nicholas.

On the Go Team, we want to build trust with the street people, show the love of Jesus with food and water, and we do, willingly and lovingly. But with the front lines of the fentanyl war, it’s especially true that every day can be a junkie’s last. Fentanyl kills quickly and silently. So if nothing else, while the addict is entering that blissful yet extremely dangerous stupor, the Go team “goes” out to love, feed, counsel, and apply the spiritual tourniquet in that critical state. With life and death and eternity in the balance–the tourniquet in the spiritual war is to confess Jesus as Savior.

Getting a late start, with most of the team ahead of us, I caught up with fellow outreach members Ben Morton and Halie Johnson, who were talking to Walter, sharing Christ and offering food and water. The two were building the trust and the “right” to preach the gospel. Seeing they had earned that right, something in me welled up to go for the decision. I asked if he knew Jesus and Walter replied he was raised a Mason, and had a bit to say about that, which to me was a lot of religious gobbledeegook that hid the essence of salvation and eternal life. I cut through the religious fog to get to the essentials: Salvation is by faith alone and that Jesus, Son of God, died for him and rose again, offering eternal life to all who believe. The pain of this life is temporary, but eternal life with the God who made us is wonderful and a free gift if received by faith. Walter indeed made the confession of faith and received the eternal bus ticket. In M*A*S*H parlance, what we did in the spirit might be called “meatball surgery” – there’s no time except for the absolute essentials because other wounded warriors are waiting. After a hug, we moved to the next wounded warrior.

Halie Johnson and Bob Allen pray for and minster to a homeless man

Ben is an earnest young man, two years a Christian, with a gift that discerns spirits. After buying the bus ticket, I saw he and Halie witnessing to another troubled young man. Ben was in a squatting position while Stu (not is real name) sat on the grass. Stu had been sharing his story to Ben, who then was prompted to motion to me for backup. Stu was self-medicated and quite paranoid, speaking incoherently about unseen dangers all around. Ben sensed the demonic and wanted spiritual backup. Stu had talked about ending it all. I squatted down to offer my friendship to Stu, who was holding a strange (to me) contraption in his hands, which looked to me like some sort of dispenser–like an inhaler. 

I sat on the grass, put my arm around Stu and shared the Gospel message. He was drifting off as I implored him to call out to Jesus. I made the pitch while Ben held out his hand over him in prayer. As we prayed three or four times we watched and I felt his body twitch, after I listened for and heard a mumble of the name of Jesus from Stu’s lips. The twitching that followed, Ben and I sensed, was spiritual. Demons were leaving, at least two, as we prayed over him, a hand on his back. After saying the name of Jesus, Stu slowly drifted to sleep, and I released my arm. Meatball surgery on the streets. You do your best, love them, pray and share the Gospel, and leave the results to God.

Ben and Rick ministering to Stu

By this time, Joshua Nelson had gotten off his shift at Indigo Restaurant and had joined us in prayer, a small platoon of saints taking authority in His Name. In time Stu feel asleep peacefully in the still warm Autumn evening, while we moved on to connect with the rest of the team (returning later at Ben’s insistence to make certain he was OK). A large group had gathered near the street on the North end of the Home Depot parking lot, near the Wendy’s restaurant.

As we walked away to locate the rest of the team, Ben shared Stu’s story to me.  

Stu told Ben he was going to try to “end it all.” The pain of life had gotten too bad. That’s when Ben waved to me for backup.  I asked Ben for details as we walked, while a man in the distance stood punching and screaming obscenities at the air.

“Well, he had been molested–recently–in Nevada by his father and moved here to live on the streets. His, uh, he believes his father has killed women and put them in the walls and he’s here using drugs to get away from that.”

With drugs, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what is a hallucination, I thought.

“Drugs. Yeah. And demons. And then when you prayed for him, he, uh, he shut down. He, his hood went … he put his hood on. He got his Bear Mace out.”

I interjected, “That’s what that contraption he held in his hand was? Bear mace?”

“Yeah, bear mace.” Ben explained Stu’s paranoia caused him to pull out the bear mace for protection from the conspirators that swirled around in his head. Ben was prepared to knock the canister out of his hands should he start to make any attempt to use it on me, or maybe even himself (filling one’s lungs with bear mace could certainly do the job of “ending it all” – I thought). By the time I got there, Stu was quite placid and, not knowing what a bear mace canister looked like, I got close and put my arm around him.

“I don’t think he was gonna do something,” Ben continued. I think he was in a very, uh, sedated state, but I think it’s like the way the devil works. It was like he was coming out of him and I sensed the demons were almost out. It was, uh, pretty, pretty amazing.”

Ben continued,

“What I’ve noticed after just a month or so doing this…the demons are so strong, it seems, in these people. It, it takes time to, to pull him out. I feel like we’ve pulled some demons with that guy, but he just wasn’t quite ready. And yeah. When they get into this state…it’s almost, you know, they want to hide and, and then by next weekend, he’ll, he’ll be ready to accept Jesus Christ. You know, it’s just, it’s a process. And the devil wants to hold him.”

We caught up to the Go Team. The scene was almost jovial along the fence erected to separate the street life from the local businesses, which besides the hardware superstore includes a fast food restaurant and gas and convenience store.  Although the food, water and friendship seemed welcome by the crowd, all the talk of Jesus that accompanied our loaves and fishes was bothering one young woman. She began to loudly set straight the Go Team’s theology. She was especially bothered by all their talk about Jesus. She insisted the Bible taught that people only pray to the Lord God, and she wanted nothing to do with any talk of a Holy Trinity and especially of Jesus as the Son of God, or God in the flesh. Any effort to engage in a dialogue on the matter, however politely, only angered her. She would insist the Go Team hadn’t read or understood the Bible, and were ignorantly pushing their religion on the rest of the folks. Funny how she totally missed the irony of the moment, dead certain her theology was right, and freely pushing it while telling us we were wrong to do the same.

It seemed to this writer that the matter came down to a desire to suppress the name of Jesus. Throughout the night, it became clearer to me that the name has power, and the enemy had a reason to suppress it. The woman seemed intelligent, insisting she knew the Bible, while angry at any attempt, no matter how gentle, to engage. Religious arguments like this of course rarely get anywhere. But I was intrigued by this desire of hers to properly honor God by putting Jesus in his place. It seemed the war on these streets between the Kingdoms of light and darkness came down to the name and authority of Jesus, and the latter of the two was afraid of the power that accompanies that Name. We liked her, and a couple of us wanted to engage, as she seemed bright, and sober. I stepped in, trying to remind her that the Bible we both claimed to know included the book of John, an intimate eyewitness’s account of Jesus and his ministry. John, I countered, claimed that Jesus clearly said “I and the Father are one” and that “he who has seen me has seen the Father.”

Unsurprisingly, this went nowhere, as she loudly protested my attempts to engage in the scriptures she knew so well was another example of “shoving our religion on everyone there.” She left with a small subgroup of friends toward Evergreen Way.

A group of addicts stayed behind. A young man named Slick (not his real name) was feeling the drugs and wanted to know where he could get a shower. I imagined it would definitely be nice for a fellow who spent the entire day outside on the streets to enjoy a hot shower.  Ben, Josh and I tried to think of a way a street addict on the corner of Evergreen and Airport Road could get one, but could come up with nothing.

An older man, sober and sitting nearby against the fence, chimed in, “The Union Gospel Mission will come by tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure he gets a shower.”

The man cared for his friend. It doesn’t take long to learn that these people who come out of their wooded areas and hovels along the backs of stores and strip malls to gather along the highway and feed their addictions are a community of two shared commonalities: 1) they are addicts, who got ensnared in the need to kill the pain–physical and mental–and, 2) they are fellow humans who share this life. They appreciate the sandwiches Gary Krause and his grandson Matias made for them today and do each Tuesday. They appreciate the water, the other assorted snacks, even the prayer. Heck, they may even be there because we are there. After all, God put Sonrise here in this neighborhood for a reason. But it’s the need for the drugs that draw them together, day by day.

I introduced myself and asked for his name.

“Mechanic Mike, that’s what they call me. I’m a mechanic. Hey, sorry about that young lady who was giving you a hard time.” He seemed genuinely sympathetic for us. “She gets that way.”

Mike’s stoned friend was having a hard time. He was standing uncomfortably and slowing drifting downward. I wanted to ease him down to the fence thinking he would be more comfortable with his back up against it, but Mike informed me it’s painful for him to sit. As I placed my hand on, and arm around him, praying softly in the Name the young lady had wanted nothing to do with, he seemed to respond with comfort.  Like Stu, I felt genuine love for the young man, and wanted to hold him as long as I could. He seemed to approve–he wasn’t pushing me away anyway. He would drift down where I hoped I could guide him down in a sitting position, but he would slowly draw himself back up. He never said a word, but I sensed a peace and comfort from him as he slowly drifted back up and down again. Looking back, I wonder if he knew that if he rested on the ground, and allowed his head to drift backward, the fentanyl god would take his life. The Go Team has been trained for administering Narcan, an emergency anti overdose medicine to counteract breathing problems, severe sleepiness and unresponsiveness from opioids that can lead to death. It was a few weeks later that Dave would lead a man named Angel to faith in Christ. A half hour after he did, Angel overdosed and was revived by another person on the street who had a dispenser ready.

As we held and prayed for the young man, Mike began to open up about his life. Prior to his current situation, Mike had a good life, a loving wife, and two daughters now in their 30’s. He knew Sonrise, he’d been there a few times. He loved it there, and remembers the presence of God could be so strong he was “floating on air”.

So .. How’d he get here?

“I’m a drug addict … you know … I hate that guy (referring to himself in the addicted state). I was clean for twenty years. When my daughter was born, and I held her in my arms, and looked in her eyes. So it clicked in my head. I didn’t want to use anymore. I just wanted to just do everything I could to make sure my daughter was, … had everything she needed. And I just wanted to do everything I could to better myself…support her and my other daughter…”

He wistfully remembered his now deceased wife, Sabrina, who preferred to be called Manita, a silly reason that made him chuckle. He missed his wife, who still made him laugh.

“She was so funny … she … I know …  ,” then Mike’s voiced changed a bit. “I know … that she’s up there looking down … disappointed. Now you understand why I’m self-destructing.

“I need to be associated with some people that aren’t using.”

We encouraged him to come back to Sonrise, told him about Josh’s best friend John Gilbert, who got off the streets himself, is now a member of Sonrise, living in (and now managing) a halfway house, meeting God in powerful ways at Sonrise, connected with a Jesus Community, and getting back on his feet (see John’s own Christmas Miracle story elsewhere in this issue) .

The streets can be a small world. As it turned out Mike knows John Gilbert. And sure enough, when asked, John says indeed he knows Mechanic Mike. We talked about making a connection and seeing what we can do about getting Mike in a halfway house and back at Sonrise. I didn’t think to ask if he had a phone and get his number (social workers provide the homeless with phones so they can connect with services). But Mike knows where Sonrise is. Unfortunately, we humans still struggle with this need of ours to clean up, get our act together, before entering a church.  But of course, that’s a little like putting on your suit and dress before entering the hospital. When you need Jesus, like when you need medical care, you come as you are.  But, we don’t, so that’s why there’s a Sonrise MASH team.

I asked Team Leader Dave Peterson to describe the street community he and the team serve each Tuesday:

“When we go out there it’s always 50% of the people we know, and 50% you meet for the first time,” Peterson said.  “And these people get to know each other very quickly. And they rely on each other…for protection…for tips where to get food and where to get services. And we come and we bring hope, and joy, and a way for them to take their next steps: ‘What are your next steps?’ Is a very important question that we ask them.”

Dave Peterson unloading food to take to the homeless

And what are the next steps?

“Some of the important first steps are to get their ID. Some of them have either lost or have had their ID stolen. And then, of course, a place to live. And a job. And you know, sometimes the first step is just mending relations with family members and their friends.”

“They’re surviving. They’re survivors. And we, we need to get them beyond surviving, to flourishing. And we’ve seen people that have gone into detox. We’ve seen people that have got jobs now and a lot of people accept Jesus Christ as Lord. And they’re always grateful for the sandwiches, the clothes, the blankets, the sleeping bags that we give them.

Currently Dave is focused on raising the money for a hot food van, that can also serve as a kind of mobile street office to help coordinate these next steps while providing a hot meal, something especially welcome in winter.

Pulling people off the streets and setting them firmly on the rock is rarely if ever an instant process. By now, all the social bridges that keep them off the streets–family, friends–have been burned, devastated by the harm of drug abuse–the stealing, lying, withdrawal, self-medication for the pain both mental and physical–it’s a downward spiral that takes an active church, serving as the body of a powerful Creator and Savior who loves them despite it all.

So powerful a savior, so powerful a love, He motivates a man named Dave Peterson to go out with his team every week to share it. Dave gets to the gospel point and the greatest gift – eternal life – immediately for everyone he meets on the street. Dave asks, “If you died today, why would God allow you into heaven?” The question is meant to cause the person to examine himself and his beliefs, to come up with a way to self-justify his life. And when the answer, whatever it may be, is given, Dave then immediately goes to the scripture for the one and only answer that works. No one can earn his way to heaven. The reason God sent Jesus into the world is because no one is worthy of Heaven except Jesus, the perfect, sinless man and Son of God, who – fully human and fully God – sacrificed His own sinless life to pay the penalty of all who have sinned. Furthermore, because He is sinless and God in the flesh, His blood is powerful an sufficient for all who believe and receive the free gift of forgiveness by faith.

For those who believe, confess, and thus receive that forgiveness, they are justified and made right by God: not their own works, but by faith. By faith they know Jesus indeed paid the penalty of their sins – which is death and separation from God, Jesus demonstrated He has the ability to pay the penalty for their sins by rising from the dead. This is the faith that both rescues us from this life and will bring us to glory, joy and peace in the age to come. This is the eternal gift that Dave and the Go Team offers.

For information on how you would like to either join or support the Go Team, text Dave Peterson at 425-220-4159.

Note: on a later Go Team outreach, Ben encountered again the young man who wanted a shower. He was now in a wheelchair, having been hit by a car since the original meeting. He’d indeed gotten his shower, but had no shoes and very swollen feet. A woman volunteer had brought a new pair of shoes that night, which Ben brought to him. They fit perfectly.