Magdalene's Mission Uncategorized

Peace, Love & Hygiene vol. 117     

4/17/2024

Let’s talk adventures in Detroit!

We had the ultimate mother-load of food to take out this week. It was beautiful!

Our first stop of the night, we pulled over and sat for about an hour. Little swarms of mostly women and a few men approached the van eager for food. I love it when the weather breaks into the warm season. We can stand outside and talk to people more.

One couple who was treated had the necrosis terrible in them. The young man had a hole in his arm that looked like it had been scaped out with a burning ice cream scooper. It was kind of heart shaped. I spoke with his girlfriend for a bit while he was receiving medical attention.

You could not have met a gentler soul than this girl. She couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds. My dog weighs heavier than her. She has the softest, sweetest little voice. She talked to us about her addiction and how hard she was trying to be free. She was working with the medical team to put herself in a position to succeed. The housing resource specialist found her an apartment. She can’t wait to be somewhere safe. She want to be in a home where the bad things aren’t always coming after her.

I saw the open flesh wound on her hand. The skin rotted off all the way up her arms, but she couldn’t move her sleeves. The necrosis has spread into her hands, and her fingers are permanently bent. The knuckles are swollen, and her fingers don’t move anymore. Traci remembered struggling to put gloves on her hands last winter. They had to find her some mittens. She said she’s been like that since last April. It’s very painful all the time.

Xylazine. It’s what drug dealers mix with fentanyl to make to make the high more intense. It’s also an animal tranquilizer that over time causes necrosis, aka, the flesh rot.

We had a small crowd of people by the two vehicles. Some of the women were known sex-workers. A couple of cars parked around the corner from us. They were staring at our girls like they were waiting for something.

Tuesday nights are special for our people. It’s the one time of the entire week that they can get their survival needs met safely. It is a coveted, sacred time.

Nick was out with us again. I love this dude. He noticed the other guys staring at our girls. Nick got out of the van and just walked around and stood between the girls and the other men. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Traci and I took care of our ladies, and the other guys drove away. We laughed!

Two ladies parked their vehicles in front of ours. Then they got out of their cars and started walking around the perimeter of the empty lot we were all parked in front of. They were praying. They walked around and around the edge of the lot praying for a while.

Next thing I know, Traci is best friends with these two ladies, and she invites me over to meet them. They are from a local church. They set up tables and offer meals to people in that little lot every week. I think it would be fantastic to work with their little group sometime. Don’t you?

We drove to a few more places on the southwest side. A couple of them were places where we knew people lived. A few people we just met randomly walking.

We saw Show-Time, but he looked really confused. He was standing in an empty parking lot with some of his belongings scattered around him in a circle. By the time I gave him food, hygiene and a hug, the medic team said that we were being video recorded. Time to go. Now.

A saw a kitty walking alone outside, but the caravan wouldn’t turn around so that I could feed him. Sigh.

The old man who camped behind the ice cream shop remembered me. Everyone was elated with the amazing, generous food donations. Marley (Felix) and Lilli worker hard preparing chicken salad and putting it on croissants and yummy bread. We had plenty of cookies and muffins to keep people munching on something until next week.

Fed a kitty!

“Can I get some of those hot dogs?”

Apparently, there is a group that drives around serving people hot dogs. Sometimes we get mixed up with them. They haven’t been around in a while though.

I saw Darla! Our favorite homeless 3-legged pit bull! I had food for her, and she had a bunch of licky- lovey kisses for me. She still uses the leash I gave her last year. Her person loves that she gets loved on by us.

He is a nice man.

Last stop of the night, I saw my Widow Who Sits! She came dancing across the mud parking lot to give me a hug. The van was towed away. Now she lives in an abandoned pick-up truck with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who, by the way, is still free and clean after a week of living out there! He still has his job and finds a way to get to work every day. He looks healthy. He really appreciated the clean socks. After a long day of breaking up concrete, clean feet are a good feeling.  

Because, you know, he can’t take shower.

But he can eat real food for breakfast this morning. And he can see what he’s doing because we gave them a flashlight, and a glow stick. He has a clean jacket and socks for work today. He has baby wipes, and toothpaste to clean up. He has the essentials to continue being a grown man. That he can do. We do what we can, and that’s all we can do.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit.

Amen.

Magdalene's Mission Uncategorized

Peace, love & hygiene: vol. 112

January 29, 2024

What a night!

First, I had my dearest best friend and brother-by-another-mother, Nick with me. He was the Magdalene’s Mission chariot last night. You may have heard me talk about him before. He owns Jets Pizza in Hartland. All my events are catered by Jets.  Since the pizza store caught on fire in December, the guys have had a lot of free time while waiting for it to be rebuilt. Nick used some of his down time to make a difference. Make differences, we did. We packed up his van with winter gear, hygiene kits, and spaghetti and meatball with green beans dinners. The he drove me to Detroit to check out what goes out there.

Our first stop was on an overpass bridge. The medical team saw someone we knew with a sign. We pulled over and helped him out. He is with a friend of mine who finally got her own place. Unfortunately, her ID is gone, and she can’t move in until she replaces it. They think they have a path to getting it back though. Until then, they’re still staying in a burned down house.

As I was talking to him, he brought up two very interesting things. The first was that he finished reading my book! He thought it was really good. He said that he enjoyed reading it, but he admitted that there were a couple of parts where he had to put the book down for a minute.

The other thing was that he had a dream about me. It was a really weird dream, too. There were even dancing goth midget women involved. What a great dream to be a part of!

I took notes, but I left them in Nick’s car. We didn’t see a whole ton of people. It was pretty dead out. I did see a man picking through a trash can. We offered him real food and he was ecstatic. I put some gloves on his hands, too.

We drove down an alley and there were four old men surrounding a little bonfire. I used what I remember from eighth-grade Spanish to communicate. I’m going to study Spanish. No one on the street speaks French.

But my personal highlight of the year was that I finally found her. I found… Marilyn Monroe! Do you remember me talking about her a couple of years ago? She was with the Writer Dude. He died from kidney failure. Then she was pregnant. Baby got adopted. Then she was always sick. I kept trying to get to her. Once, I even went down into the creepiest, rat-infested, dope den, just so I could find her and hold her and remind her of how loved she was. But she was gone. And then months went by.

So, I prayed. And prayed. And prayed, And I never gave up on her, even in my heart.

Remember the house we went to last week where we gave away all the flashlights and it looked like lightsabers? She’s there. So, she’s in the area. She’s with people who are safe-(ish) to be with.

When I first saw her, she just walked up to me and starting smiling. At first, I didn’t want to get my hopes up that it was her, and then be embarrassed and disappointed if I was mixed-up. She went to the medical van and came back. She smiled again. I said, “Is it really you?” And we just grabbed one another and hugged for so long. I kept telling her over and over that I loved her, and I never stopped praying for her. And she squeezed me tight and said, “Thank you. I love you so much, too.”

I don’t know about you, but that to me is as powerful as it gets. She knew that she was loved. That no matter what, no matter what she has been through, my arms are always open to her. I can’t count the number of times I wanted to give up and be done with this relentless existence. But someone loved me. So, I was accountable. I didn’t throw myself away because I was worth something to someone (I love you Aunt Bobbie). Marilyn Monroe is priceless to me.

Nick and I have been best friends for 36 years. That’s longer than any of the other volunteers, or most of our homeless clients have even been alive. That means, everything I went through, Nick went through it, too.


Everything Nick has been through, we’ve been through that, too. That includes everything. From me hiding out in his house when I was a fifteen-year-old runaway, to being at each other’s first weddings, to being there for our first divorces. Then rejoicing when we found our forever spouses. Nick and I celebrated each other’s children when they were born. Nick took me in when I had to leave my abusive relationship with an alcoholic who fell into an even worse crack addiction. He and his wife are why I landed in Pinckney. And we mourned together, as each of us had a first-born child die young.

What we learned is that you need your friends. When Ms. GG came up to me last week, she was pretending to be tough. She was going to be independent, deal with her problems on her own. I recognize that. But a real friend can see below the surface. Traci and I could smell the hurt coming off from her. I gave her a chance to be held, to be safe, to be protected. This dear little great-grandmother was raped by one of the men who was staying in the same house. If we wouldn’t have seen her, she probably would never have got treated for sexually transmitted infection. She would be in so much more pain. We got her connected to the appropriate resources. Avalon is spectacular at helping people to recover after a violent sexual attack. She needed a friend. When everyone around you is in survival mode, real friendship is rare.

The reason I was there for her? You gave me stuff. Thank you, Jimmy, for all those great food containers. Thank you, everyone, for the coats, blankets, snacks, and money for hand warmers. I drove it to the most vulnerable people I could find on the streets of Detroit. And we helped them become whole people again.

I’ll say it again- The Kingdom of God is a verb, not just a noun. That Kingdom would be filled with friends and friendship.

We don’t ever give up on our friends. And when your friend asks for help, you help them.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit.

Amen.

Post-script: This is our biggest fundraising time of the year. If you want to keep reading these reports and be a part of the healing in the world, you can donate to the Facebook Fundraiser. Or if you click on the How To Donate button at the MagdalenesMission.com website, you can access our Amazon Wish List that will send supplies straight to my house, or Venmo, or Square, or however you want to help. We can always use more socks, and drawstring bags.