Magdalene's Mission Uncategorized

Peace, Love & Hygiene: vol. 144-

The outreach kept going for the past three days. Presently, I am in a quaint, East Lansing cafe drinking coffee with an old friend. Here we go-

Affirmation:

Street Outreach– What an intense and wonderful trip! Maggie the van was loaded with hygiene kits, clean clothes, socks, jackets, and most importantly- lots of food. We started out in a neighborhood that was absolutely dilapidated. It looked like projects, rows of government housing. More of the buildings were condemned than livable. A lot of plywood windows. I heard that everyone is being evicted by the end of the month. No one knew who we were, so we had to approach people as they began lingering and watching. 

“Are you hungry? Do you need clothes? I have some really useful hygiene kits!” 

Most people did. One gentleman was confused and took the entire tote of mens clothing back into his house. Traci and I looked around and noticed it missing. He must have been fast! We didn’t even see him! But when we asked him about it, he looked embarrassed and brought it right back. I told him that the clothes were for a lot of people, but he was more than welcome to take what he needed. Just DO NOT take my totes. We are in desperate need of more totes. That’s why I have to put a hold on clothing donations. It’s not that I don’t want them. I don’t have any place to put them.

We took advantage of the daylight and wandered outside our usual zones to find anyone who may need us. One woman we stopped to help told us that she could use our things, at first. But before we could hand her anything, she told us that she didn’t know us. She would rather not. That’s fair.

We started travelling towards more familiar territory. People who recognized us started pouring out of the shadows. I heard my name screamed from across the street more than once. The ladies came running up with looks of pure joy and comfort on their faces. I saw quite a few familiar faces all at once. I saw my Angel baby! She’s alive and kicking!

I received the best, perfect compliment from my Working Girls that night. They told me that they knew that I genuinely loved them. They told me that I cared for them like no one else did. One lady said, “No one says good things about us, or truly loves us like you guys do. No one else is as genuinely on our side. We love you. Thank you!”

That moment was so real, so affirming, that it felt like Jesus Christ himself came down from Heaven all the way to the ghetto to pat me on the back. 

If you ever wonder why I’m not more focused on the business aspect, or building my company, blah, blah, blah… that would be why. 

Because there is no money to be made. There are people. There are needs. There are people who can all put in together a bit at a time, according to their gifts, and we, as a species, we win. In case you somehow missed it, I, Kayla M. Donaldson, won an award for community service from Detroit WDIV Go For It! The link to the segment is below. It was great to be acknowledged by a Detroit Community icon.

When I hear how much we mean to the most vulnerable, persevering people I know, then we ARE doing the right things for the right people for the right reason. We made good things happen.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit!

Amen.

Go 4 It: Woman supports, aids vulnerable Detroit communities: https://youtu.be/_2sDVs3_5io?si=AQpPsWO2U-tD5zh_

Magdalene's Mission Uncategorized

Peace, Love & Hygiene: Vol. 143

This report is about the 2 people Traci and I served yesterday. With all due respect to their privacy, I’m still not going to sugar-coat it. This is who we serve:

They are an adorable married couple who have been together for nearly two decades. They came here from another state to be near their family. After a series of unfortunate events, they were left with nothing but the streets. Like my girl said, “The real gate-way drug is the trauma that happens to make you think you need that stuff.”

Or, as her husband put it, “Heroin was bad, but we quit that. After the relapse, now there’s this fentanyl crap in everything and you’ll die before you get it out of your system.”

When they got together, they built a successful family, and a pretty little all-American life. The house, the cars, the kids, all of it is gone now.

The first thing she wanted me to see was how well her face had healed. The last time I had contact with her husband, he called me in the middle of the night. He told me that his wife was ‘working’. She was attacked with a knife. The man told her he was going to kill her and throw away her body. She cleverly escaped the trunk of his car (somehow, thank you, Jesus) and made it back to him. “What do we do, Kayla? I can’t take her to the hospital!”

The stitches scars on her face reminded me of a rag doll. She is right. It did heal nicely. One can hardly see it.

They live in an abandoned property on the eastside of Detroit. They said that the neighbors have left them alone for over a year now. They keep the property clean, and don’t allow drug use in their den. He’s found a way to access electricity, and they bring water back in five-gallon buckets for drinking and cleaning. 

It was a beautiful day. Every once in a while she would move herself backwards into the van. “I’m trying to not let them see me.” She said, “That guy is weird.”

The husband blocks her from view. 

“Those are just customers. We don’t need to deal with them right now.”

We talked about all the people we knew from that area that we hadn’t seen in a couple of years. The list of names of people who have died was extensive. Just about everyone we knew from that house on the eastside we used to see every week is gone. Not all though. A few still survive.

I assumed overdoses, but the Wife claims it is the resurgence of AIDS. Too many girls aren’t using protection. The diseases spread like a wildfire.

Traci and I loaded them up with supplies. Shortly after I left, the husband thanked me for the feeling of clean socks. We got them plugged in with some people who can help them get their lives back again. They don’t give up on eachother. We won’t give up on them. They knew that finding that mangled up business card was going to turn their luck around. Here’s to hoping, my friends.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit.

Amen.

Post-script: The Fort St. Church volunteers are nothing short of heroes behind the scenes.

Also, the basement we are in is also THE FIRST INDOOR BASKETBALL COURT IN THE UNITED STATES! Every week, I found out something historically amazing about this place! Beauty in every cobblestone. I choose to see it. 

Magdalene's Mission Uncategorized

Peace, Love & Hygiene: Vol. 129- [I am running on less than the bare minimum of sleep combined with a maximum dosage of coffee in the tiniest Bigby in Lansing. But watch me power through this.]

Our theme for this week was adapting our Style of Outreach. What we do, where we go, and who we do it for determines how we distribute donations. When it’s busier and we get the swarms, we must be extra alert. We hyper-focus, but on seventy-seventy different things at once. Then we prioritize our attention without losing focus on each person in the crowd. It’s exciting. It’s a mad rush. We’re having fun and being both effective and efficient. We serve everyone and try to ration out donations so that we have enough for everyone who we see that night.

“Those other girls get here before me, and they take all the good stuff!”

Last night was different. Last night we got to take our time and have actual conversations with people. Check in. Get updates on their lives, and the wellbeing of mutual friends. We saw plenty of people who were both desperate and grateful. They were spread out over 3 and a half hours.

The first person we stopped to help was my Little Red-Haired Girl. She was both happy and angry to see us. Happy, because she was hungry. Angry, because she just bought herself an outfit from the Family Dollar because she needed clothes and didn’t know if she would see us.

 Someone graciously donated a couple of packages of women’s underwear. Talk about an instant game changer in someone’s faith! She looks like she’s losing some weight. Especially in her face. That’s another reason to need new clothes. I heard her and Traci talking behind the van. I heard the Little Red-Haired Girl tell Traci, “I just want to be clean because it makes me feel so good, and I feel better about myself when I feel good.”

We stayed there for a while waiting for more people to come out and approach the vans. Only a few did. With the weather being warm, I thought for sure we would see throngs. Not so much. Flashlights were a jackpot in the donation this week.

We looked in some alleys, and behind a few buildings, but all the forts and tents had been torn down and disposed of. It means, as you may have read before, that we must try and find everyone all over again. A lot of people with ongoing medical issues, or who were working with volunteers to get back on track but are now lost.

I ran into The Girls Who Reads! I had not seen her in quite some time. That’s because she’s busy with twins! She just had them. She has an apartment. I asked what she needed. She told me she needs everything. So, if you have any baby stuff, I can save you a trip to Salvation Army. Drop it off on my front porch. I even have receipts.

I got to see my best-girl, Darla, Darla’s puppy Baby, and Darla’s Person. When I got out of the van to see Darla, I could not find her. I walked all the way around the Stanbulance, but she wasn’t there. That’s because she was already sitting in the front seat of my van with a smile as big as a pit bull can smile. I gave her some food, and a chew treat. I made sure Darla’s Person, and Baby the puppy, was well cared for, too. Then she followed me back to the van and hung out with me. Her Person came to collect her, but she jumped right back into the driver seat of the van. She turned her face away from him and had a huge grin from ear to ear. What a character!

The day before, I was thinking about Darla and her unconditional love for me. I didn’t have to be anything for her to love me. I just had to accept her love. She doesn’t care if I couldn’t quit smoking cigarettes, again, this week. She doesn’t care about any of the things I am constantly riding myself or judging myself for. It’s not relevant to her love for me. I lay down on the ground of a parking lot like an idiot, and she smothers me with kisses. And in that sacred moment, I understood how unconditional love, how to love as profound God love’s, can be a part of something that can be as unfair as Nature.

We drove up and down the streets looking for anyone we recognized, or anyone sleeping in a doorway. Traci served them all. The nice thing about a slow night like last night, a trickle not a swarm, is that we can spend time with each person. We can let them browse through all the clothing, because the weather is so nice. We can let them take as much as they need, and it always ends up being the people who are normally the last ones served. We can pass out double meals. That’s a big deal, because meals have been on the smaller size lately But it’s something, and it’s (mostly) good for you. It gives each person a chance to be a person and a friend, not just another hand reaching out to the van, grasping for survival.

At one random, bored, moment at the end of the evening. I decided to experiment with my pepper spray. I mean, I had never actually sprayed one before. I walked several feet away and pointed it downwind. I flipped up the cap, then pressed the button. Nothing. I flipped the cap in the other direction and gave it a tiny squeeze, then jumped back. Immediately, even from the one or two tiny air particles, my nose burned, and I began to sneeze violently four times. Traci yelled out, “What’s that awful smell?”

“Pepper spray. I carry it. I should know how to us it.”

An older homeless man who was standing by us and talking to Traci, calmly asked, “Why? You don’t need that.”

He looked me dead in the eyes and said to me, “No one around here would ever want harm you or hurt you. They would have an unbelievable number of people coming after them.”

The power of the unconditional love of God. It’s found in nature. It’s found in people.  I found it standing in a gutter and laying on the ground in a parking lot.

Because that’s how we do it in Detroit.

Amen.