Austin, Texas, Mar 7, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Austin, Texas, like any hipster city worth its organic, non-GMO salt, is known for its food trucks.
There are about 1,000 food trucks that roam the streets of the Texas capital, offering barbecue, breakfast tacos, and gourmet grilled cheese to the masses of Pabst Blue Ribbon-swilling millennials who have recently flocked to the city.
But among them, and before them, there was Alan Graham and Mobile Loaves and Fishes.
Mobile Loaves and Fishes is a Christian non-profit founded by Graham and five other men that delivers about 1,200 meals and essentials from 12 food trucks to homeless people on the streets of Austin every night.
The ministry also recently started a village called Community First!, a place where the formerly homeless, volunteers and those desiring a simpler life live together in a village of tiny homes and recreational vehicles in what Graham calls “an RV park on steroids.”
In his newly released book Welcome Homeless, Graham recalls the story and the people behind his ministries, in his raw, straight-shooting, and often humorous voice.
In October 1996, Graham, a convert to Catholicism, had gone tentatively on a men’s retreat. At first, he was counting down the hours until the “hugs and hand-holding” were over. The retreat was too emotional for his then-very intellectual faith.
But by the end, he experienced a profound change of heart and adopted a philosophy of “just say yes.”
Several yesses and a couple of years later, Graham and his wife, Tricia, found themselves having coffee with a friend who was telling them about an initiative in Corpus Christi, Texas, where multiple churches would pool their resources to provide food for the homeless on cold winter nights.
An entrepreneur at heart, Graham immediately envisioned a catering truck that could deliver meals to the homeless (this was before the food truck boom; at the time ,Graham called them “roach coaches”).
“I woke up the next morning knowing we could franchise it, and bring it to every church, every city, and every state to feed the homeless,” he recalls in his book. “This is how entrepreneurs think: one truck becomes a thousand.”
Through his church group, he recruited six more men to join him and invest in a food truck for the homeless (they started calling themselves “The Six Pack”). One of these men turned out to be an especially key player: Houston Flake.
Socks and popsicles
Houston, who met Graham through the men’s group at St. John Neumann Catholic Church, was poorly educated and illiterate, but understood the Gospel like no one Graham had ever met.
Houston had experienced chronic homelessness throughout his life, and became a key tour guide for Graham and his crew, who were “clueless” about life on the streets as they began their ministry.
During one meeting, the group had discussed how great it would be if they could get phone cards (pre-cellphone times) to hand out to the homeless whom they would meet.
“Houston looked at us and said, ‘That is the dumbest idea on the face of the planet. They don’t need phone cards. No one wants to talk to them. They don’t want to talk to anybody. You need to put socks on that truck,’” Graham recalled.
To this day, socks are the most desired item on the trucks.
Houston also took Graham out to his “conference room” – to meet some of the homeless who were his friends. It changed Graham’s whole perspective on the population he was about to serve.
Not long after Mobile Loaves and Fishes began, Houston was diagnosed with bladder cancer and given mere weeks to live.
For his dying wish, Houston didn’t want to travel or eat a fancy steak dinner – he wanted to deliver 400 popsicles to homeless children on a hot summer day, a treat those kids rarely experienced.
“He wanted them to choose: Pink? Red? Blue? Purple? Green? He wanted to give that which they did not need but might want. He wanted to give them abundance in fruity, tasty, frozen form,” Graham wrote.
That philosophy carried over to the food trucks. The people they serve are given options – PB&J, ham and cheese, tacos? Milk, coffee, orange juice? Oranges or apples? It’s a shift from the scarcity mentality found in soup kitchens founded in the Great Depression, to an abundance mentality that is possible in the most abundant country in the world, Graham explained. They are “the little bitty choices that people who live a life in extreme poverty don’t get to make often.”
The solution to homelessness is not just housing
Since the first truck run, the ministry quickly grew. Hungry people would chase down the food trucks as they saw them making their way through the streets of Austin.
The ministry has now expanded to the cities of San Antonio, Texas; Providence, Rhode Island; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Minneapolis, Minnesota. To date, Mobile Loaves & Fishes has served over 4 million meals, and with more than 18,000 volunteers, it is the largest prepared feeding program to the homeless and working poor in Austin.
But it didn’t stop there. A little over 5 years into the ministry, Graham envisioned an “RV park on steroids”, with the philosophy of “housing first”, which holds that the homeless need housing before they can solve any of their other problems.
However, Graham knew that mere houses were not enough. What these people need and desire, like everyone, is to be known and loved – they needed community. He envisioned a place where people lived life together, knew and cared for each other, sharing kitchens and gardens and conversation.
“It developed from this idea back in 2004, where we went out and bought a gently used RV and lifted one guy off the streets into a privately owned RV park,” he said.
Because of zoning laws and other issues, it took awhile to get the idea off the ground, but the Community First! Village project was finally able to break ground in 2014.
Today, 110 people, most of them formerly homeless, call the village home. Soon, there will be enough housing for 250 people. There are brightly colored tiny homes that would give HG-TV a run for their money, as well as recreational vehicles and “canvas-sided” homes (sturdy tents with concrete foundations).
The homes provide the basics – they are essentially bedrooms – while everything else is communal. There is a communal kitchen and garden and bonfire, and places everywhere to sit and have a conversation.
Our @mobileloaves_genesisgardens chicken coop was definitely a top destination for everyone visiting #CommunityFirstVillage today. We loved having y’all out here, and the chickens definitely loved all the attention! ???? #divas
A post shared by Mobile Loaves & Fishes (@mobileloaves) on Apr 2, 2016 at 2:21pm PDT
“It’s all centered on Genesis 2:15,” Graham said. “Just after God created the Garden of Eden, he took the man, and centered him in the garden to cultivate and care for it. And so the foundation for our entire philosophy of the community is centered on God’s original plan for us, to be settled, to be at peace with each other, to live in community, to be cultivating with the gifts that he has given us, and to serve him by caring for each other.”
What needs to change
The solution to homelessness, Graham said, is not going to be found in new government policies or agencies, but rather in Christians and other people who choose to take care of each other.
“I believe it’s like the old African adage ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’” Graham said. “We have to step in, the village should step in and care for its own. What we’re doing right now is abdicating that responsibility to our government, which … tries to resolve this issue transactionally, but I believe it’s a relationship issue. Our Kingdom desire is to be wanted by each other, not ‘if you buy me a house I’m going to be happy.’ That’s not where our happiness comes from.”
One of the foundational goals of the ministry is to change the stereotypes that people have about the homeless, so that they are seen as brothers and sisters rather than as other, Graham added.
He recommended that anyone who wants to help the homeless start building relationships with them – say hello, ask their name, shake their hand, give them a sandwich or a gift card to Chick-fil-A. And then find an organization to volunteer with in your city.
“There’s a giant stereotype around the homeless, and we’re very good as Americans at stereotyping, and so the homeless population (is projected) to be drug addicts, mentally ill, criminals; they’re usually depicted as unkempt or that they don’t pay attention to hygiene, so we develop these preconceived notions that won’t even allow us to roll down our windows anymore to say ‘Hello’ or ‘God Bless,’” he said.
“Those things just aren’t true,” Graham said.
“We have five major corporate goals, and goal number one is to transform the paradigm of how people view the stereotype of the homeless. When we change that paradigm, it changes our culture so as to be able to go and love on our brothers and sisters.”
That’s one of his hopes for the book, and the reason he made sure to tell the stories of so many homeless men and women who have directly touched his life.
“What we want to do is spread the kingdom message of a better way to love on our neighbors, so I’m hoping the book will go broad and deep, and people will be inspired to go out there and begin doing what it is that we’re doing, that’s what I hope.”
Because “what’s happening here in Austin, Texas is nothing short of a miracle.”
[…]
And so here we are.
Our devoutly Democratic Catholic president has effectively made it illegal to affirm the Catholic faith.
And half of Catholics will, no doubt, respond by continuing to vote for Democrats.
I mean, come on. With Catholics like this, who needs atheists.
Only half?
The irony is that one of the more noted atheists, Richard Dawkins, recently said he was a cultural Christian and wanted to live in a place dominated by Christianity (as opposed to Islam).
The other half Republican? Do the hypothetical votes cancel each other out and amount to nothing in the end? If we were all to stay out of politics and expend out time and energy on spreading the light in this dark world, perhaps it would be a better place. Won’t happen though! 😂
Your placement of the word “devoutly” before “Democratic” says it all!
I think that too many Democratic Catholics, especially older Catholics, are still voting for Pres. John F. Kennedy, who was a fairly good man and a fairly good President. But there are also too many Democratic Catholics who honestly and naively believe that the Democratic Party helps “the little men”–the poor, the working people, the minorities, the immigrants, and the women and children, while the Republicans are all rich fat cats who use “the little men” to enrich their own pockets. How sad, and I hope that local Catholic parishes will be unafraid to provide educational opportunities for people, especially younger people who might be more open to learning truth, to learn about political REALITY in our country at this time in history! People don’t read books much nowadays, so I hope that Trent Horn’s book will have a strong online presence so that it will actually get read.
The first time I became consciously aware of the words Democrat and Republican was during the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960. (I was seven at the time.) Born and raised in a blue-collar city in eastern Massachusetts, I assumed that the whole world was made up of Democrats. One evening I said to my father, “We’re Democrats, right?” — “That’s right,” he answered. — “Well, who are the Republicans?” I demanded to know. Without hesitation, he said, “Rich people.” I realized the irony only years later. Between Nixon and Kennedy, who grew up with wealth, limousines, summers abroad, fancy boarding schools? Who, in short, was one of the “rich people”? Hint: It wasn’t Nixon.
JFK was a pervert and a serial womanizer. The press covered for him. He was not a good man.
Things change Mrs.Sharon. Back in the day everyone where we live were Democrats. Rich or poor alike. Now many working class people vote GOP.It keeps evolving.
Who are the most dangerous people presently who can over turn this nonsense? They’re ARCHEOLOGISTS! Since by looking at skeletal remains can easily state who was a woman and who was a man!!! Biden is a pathetic wreck of a catholic whose continual showing of “St” beau’s rosary beads has become a rite, that we could all do without!
I’ve thought pretty much the same thing. Despite contemporary rhetoric to the contrary, gender is not assigned at birth; sex is recognized at birth, after having been indelibly established in the womb. If one is male (or female) in the womb, one will be male (or female) until the moment of death, and if archaeologists dig up that person’s bones in the future, they will still be recognized as having been those of a male (or female).
Also, how many “biological female” athletes are bucking to compete in men’s games? I wonder why not. 🤔
There are a few women who have been admitted to men’s football teams as place kickers or holders. And both women and men skate together on synchronized skating teams (12 skaters on the ice performing a program that includes many of the figure skating elements such as lifts, spins, and jumps, along with team elements such as wheels, intersections, lines, circles, blocks. And Kaitlin Clark recently broke the record for baskets (basketball) long held by Pete Marovich. As a woman, I think most women have too much common sense to try to compete with men in professional sports. And now that workplace sports teams (baseball, volleyball, broomball, etc.) appear to be part of the Baby Boomer generation, I don’t know that we’ll see women competing with men very often.
Archeologists are now being cautioned not to identify human remains as male or female despite skeletal and DNA evidence–because they don’t know how the dead “identified.”
Won’t this new executive order also outlaw same-sex schools at any level?
I predict that in three to five years “dudes” will be winning nearly all women’s events, and that should put an end to this nonsense. It is unfortunate that until that happens a lot of dedicated women athletes will be missing out.
It’s schizophrenic. The reader likely knew immediately what that refers to. That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction. But the fact is it’s, I believe, more of a moral disease than clinical that afflicts many, particularly clergy. However, clergy disguise their immoral disease, and are aware of the malice, Biden flaunts it.
What President Biden’s immoral conceptualization of Christianity really says is that he believes what is evil is good, and that good is evil. How so? Well, isn’t that the moral theology that teaches there are evil behaviors, although there are also circumstances in our concrete reality that diminish the evil? A mitigation that corresponds between degree of difficulty and conscience, although contrary to this form of ethics, is the availability of grace, the gift won for us by Christ on the battlefield of the cross.
However, Title IX gender identity discrimination is an entirely new species of moral degenerative disease. Different from mitigation and undue burden. No need for grace here because what the Biden Administration now affirms, is the justice protected freedom to profess whatever gender description for themselves people wish regardless of their biological identity. This is an entirely new freedom based morality that overrules any personal conviction or religious belief. Joe Biden had said previously that he disbelieves what the Catholic Church officially teaches on this and other vital issues. And of course most know the rapport between the Vatican, a number of hierarchy, and Biden, strongly suggests that this is what the Church holds to be true. Should there be wonder why so many are leaving, when the Easter Vigil Mass this year had 17 attendees at a local parish when just a short couple of years past it was in the hundreds?
Local parish where?
My parish baptized/confirmed more than 17 people at Easter Vigil. The overall statistics seem to indicate a significant increase in people entering the Church.
I rather suspect it depends mainly on whether the parish in question believes what the Church has traditionally taught, or at least is struggling in that direction and against the prevailing current. There’s no point in going to Church if the prevailing culture is correct, so the person must be somewhat counter-cultural to even bother showing up, and the parish must be counter-cultural to attract those people.
Where? Anywhere small town USA. Why does a parish in the same vicinity flourish? Is it the priest who lives a devout life, a single parishioner offering his prayers and suffering? Perhaps the parish with a Legion of Mary that visits medical centers, nursing homes, jails, the shutins, the sick has that spark of faith. That the sun shines here and not over the hill is beyond our control. Not so where grace flows down.
“That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction.”
Ah, it is so easy! “I am a Catholic and Jesus said we should love our neighbor and so, out of my love for him I call him “she” and grant him access to all females-only places”. Being challenged “but this is not a woman” such a Catholic will answer “mercy is above justice” and so it goes. Being challenged “But the women do not want a man in the female changing room, they are afraid” the answer is “how intolerant of them – they have nothing to be afraid of, they must work on themselves”. Etc.
It is all about the heresy of being “nice”. Such politicians are “nice” to biological men. Is it an authentic empathy with transsexuals? – Absolutely not, it is all about “nice” self-image. Why am I so sure? – Because a person cannot have selective empathy and compassion. If he feels empathy with biological males who want to get access to the female-only places he must also feel the same empathy with vulnerable women who do not want those males to be there. But he does not. And why is that? – Because:
1) he does not have empathy for anyone, he is deficient
2) because if he refuses to allow males into female toilets he is not “nice” to women, he is just normal – why if he allows, he is very nice.
Here we are, it is all about being nice. Such “Catholics” swapped “good” with “nice” and reinterpret the Scriptures and Tradition accordingly – according to themselves.
I also argue that men who make the laws which endanger women are not really men, psychologically. They are devoid of a normal instinct any normal man has, of protecting women and girls. So those men (and women) who create such laws basically announce “we are neither male nor female but something else” – and here if they are Catholics they may say “Yes! Isn’t the apostle Paul said it?”
Yes. Men have lost their sense of manhood in fear of retribution. Appeasing deviants is ideological favoritism. To be odd or queer once disdained as a cowardly betrayal of one’s manhood is now vaunted as heroic. Liberty, now freedom to revise life itself, now an idol of worship, jealously protected by federal law. Enemies of truth such as George Soros invests millions to corrupt the Justice system with the aim of collapsing our once traditional Common Law culture. Lucifer has done an incredible job of feminizing modern man. Man’s elective weakness is a rebellion against God.
Prof Eduardo J Echeverria notes that Pope Francis, in his autobiography, ‘Life: My Story Through History’ advocates for legal support of same-sex civil unions of homosexuals “who [Francis says] experience the gift of love”. Echeverria asks, “In what sense, if any, is homosexual love a gift?” .
So, is it the story of feminizing men in the West? In my homeland (Russia) we have it because of multiple wars. After the war 1942-45 we had a deficiency of men – of the fathers and those whom women can marry. Even worse, the widowed mothers would often treat their sons as “my precious”. A generation spoiled by single mothers, men rose who seriously expected women to serve them just like their mothers did. They honestly believed that their value is in the fact they are men (what kind of men did not matter).
It is a very broad generalization of course but misogyny created by mothers is definitely a trend. And such misogyny, sucked with mother’s milk is the worst.
By the way, I have observed among younger Roman Catholic priests in the West a disproportionate number of those who clearly show the symptoms of being “a mother’s golden boy”. Like many Russian men, they are brought up by mothers – not that they had physically absent fathers but emotionally absent, disconnected from their wives or suppressed by them.
You make good sense on the issue Anna. Fortunately with will and fortitude a mother’s darling can still make himself a man.
It looks like there are 2 reasonable options: 1. Successfully challenge the law in federal court, and break it until the case(s) is won. 2. Start setting up a parallel education system that does not use federal funding.
Going along to get along is not a reasonable option.
The democrats can make up fantasy rules on any perv thing they want but it will not wash. More and more the little girls themselves are saying no when asked to compete against a boy at a competition. There is no reason for these girls to risk injury or compete on an uneven playing field to satisfy some crazy notion of sexuality which is transparently false. Its clear the kids have more brains than the adults on this issue.
The Government was allowed to create a religion when it established “gender identity” as a protected characteristic that isn’t shared by all people. There can only be protections for immutable traits like race and biological gender/sex, which are shared by everyone, not the unverifiable, unnatural and imagined idea of sex and gender. This makes “Gender Identity” a government sponsored religion which is why it conflicts with Christianity.