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Saturday in the park with the others By JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer If you ever find yourself homeless and desperate to be queen or king for a day, just one day of relief to think better of the world and your own place in it, which to you would be very near the bottom, you will be a blessed creature if you run across someone from Calvary Chapel of Oceanside. Oh, the sun will shine that day, brighter than you can remember. It will play across your head and shoulders until at twilight it lies down on a calm Pacific. You'll be a king, you'll be a queen, you will see, and the bleakness of poverty will for a few precious hours fade to hope. There'll be music you can dance to, Jesus rocks and rolls sometimes, and food that will look and taste like nothing you'd let yourself remember for a day or a week or a year. It won't come from dumpsters. And there'll be all you can eat as seconds, thirds and who's counting? Not Calvary Chapel People; they proved it last Saturday. They got a clutch of Oceanside permits and took over about two-thirds of Buccaneer Park, hard by the ocean, and threw a shindig for the homeless. A band played, volunteers set up 25 or 30 tents, and the food was gauged as enough to feed 300. There were no advance ads. No publicity. But among the homeless there are mysterious grapevines, and probably 300 homeless men and women -- of North County's estimated 2,000 homeless, street people and those in shelters -- showed up. On foot or on scarred bikes. Slowly at first, then more quickly. The frightened looks of the utterly embarrassed homeless -- at how they got that way, at the call of drugs, the allure of drinking, the missteps, the betrayals, the gutters of bad nights -- fell away into a form of recovered assuredness, of, "hey, I'm not too bad." The way most of us are lucky to live our lives is far from the homeless condition. We don't have to drift in from the shadows as we head for Buccaneer and the open arms and al fresco dining halls of Calvary Chapel. Most of us are in relatively good shape, as humans go, and proud of our comforts. We worked for what we've got, we sometimes like to say, so why don't "they?" meaning the homeless. "They made choices, that's hoe they got that way..." and so on. It is not evil to think like that, even if on the surface it seems brutally uncharitable. But when we do, we go to far. We cannot know the demons that pushed them down, the temptations, the falls into the eventual and god-awful internal prisons from which they cannot find escape. Yet secretly, what we do know, and the probable reason for the contempt that sometimes comes up like a terrible bile in the best of us, is that we are afraid we might become them. One little slip, one misjudgment, one cigarette, one joint, one sip, one needle, one vial, one lapse -- one bad step, and we are they. Or so we fear. And too often, we then scorn them. It may be a long time before we, and they, understand that what we meant to say was, we are everlastingly sorry for a world that put them at the low end, and at our chill reaction to their plight. We, the presently less afflicted, will learn some day what Calvary Chapel knows now, that the homeless are not inadequate socially. They are not people who in some compartment of our minds have been assigned the cursed name of misfit. It is wrong, and perhaps in the charity of long life, or the visit of inspiration, we will learn that. They are homeless. Saturday was a great day. Just one, but dandy. It lasted well into twilight, which, as we all know, heralds the return of darkness. In the winter, Calvary Chapel plans another bright day for the homeless; no date yet, no place. How it could be better than last Saturday is hard to imagine. There, for a day, stood kings; there sat queens. Thursday, July 31, 2008North County Times: The Californian

The Rock of Faith Foundation has been incorporated in the state of California since April of 2006. Our goal is to start a Christ-centered restoration facility in San Diego's North County where we can help people be freed from their bondage to addictions. Our prayer is to acquire property, (a home, building, hotel/motel, or land that we can construct a facility on), that would allow us to accommodate as many people as possible that are willing to finally be set free from their addictions. If God wills, the foundation would be able to house men and women on a ranch style facility that will be run according to a "community" model. The Foundation is a Nonprofit Organization that exists for the sole purpose of glorifying our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ through our obedience to the Holy Scriptures. The Foundation has been called to serve God by serving others.

Since the Foundation does not have a facility yet, the Board of Directors have determined that we should help the homeless in our community to start making an impact. The Foundation has been networking with various Nonprofit Organizations to gain experience and to develop relationships. The Foundation has partnered with several other organizations thus far, and has been able to make a significant difference in the homeless population by pooling our resources. There have been a number of outreaches conducted in Oceanside thus far, and several people have made 1st time commitments to our Lord Jesus Christ! We have helped eight people get off the streets and be placed in local recovery homes.

Browse our Web site for more information about the Rock of Faith Foundation. If you have any questions or would like to speak with a Rock of Faith Foundation representative regarding our services, please e-mail us at bblack@rockoffaithfoundation.org or call us at 760-212-3787.

At the Rock of Faith Foundation, Jesus always comes first. If you would like to help us make a difference by contributing to the Foundation, click the contribute button to help us provide items to the homeless. Thank you and may God richly bless you for supporting our efforts. May the Lord richly bless you as you serve Him by serving others.

In His Service,
Bob Black