For those who love us…

hey… tim here.

this is for all of you who may still check this from time to time just to see if we have updated on our post-traumatic stress disorder that developed from our time on the streets. no, we didn’t really develop that, well… atleast i haven’t. ben has gotten engaged since we came back (which i’m sure all of you know) and is working some sort of job… not sure what because he doesn’t talk to me anymore. i guess there were too many heated arguments on the trip. kidding again… anyway, i have moved into the Mulberry House which is a place in urban springfield where we are attempting to live. that’s it. no big witnessing plan or plan to “eradicate” poverty. we are attempting to live intentionally  as Jesus in this neglected neighborhood. to see more about that please check out http://unlikelyinsurgence.blogspot.com/ that site lists our goals and so forth and also has ways you can help! thanks again for following us along our short trip and our bigger journeys through life. we love you.

tim

gratitude and graduation.

it is with sincere gratitude and love that we would like to thank you for your prayers, thoughts and comments of encouragement. we have ended our trip a tad bit early for a few reasons. the first and foremost being that my grandfather was just recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has been given less than two months to live. the second is that we believe we have learned the majority of what we could learn by staying out a few weeks longer, and the third is merely that we were exhausted… which i suppose was the point.

ben’s dad picked us up in DC this past week and i arrived home on friday night while they have headed out for a bit of vacation at grandma’s. our first shower and bed in many weeks was a wonderful thing. we finished our trip with a long, hike out to the hotel, showered and passed out till his dad got there later that night.

the trip has taught us a million things which we may choose to share at a later date, but for now we will need quite a while of personal reflection to process the entire journey. we also have not completely decided where this trip has brought us and where it will continue to take us… which i suppose will come along with the processing.

again, i’d like to thank you so much for everything you all have given to us through comments and prayer. we appreciate those prayers in the middle of the night when you’ve woken up thinking about us, and we appreciate all of your encouragement through this blog. thank you for following us on this little journey in our lives, and i’m sure ben will be on shortly to say much of the same.

a final note… no matter what your church, your neighbors or your own pride tells you… continue to live for love and justice however God leads you to do it. thanks again.

love,
timothy d.

the cries of the lonely.

i am convinced that many of the mentally ill on the streets are mentally ill simply because they have nobody to talk to for so long that they begin to talk to themselvs. then, after a long period of time of talking to themselves they become to wrapped up in having their own conversations that they lose touch with reality. i don’t know if that’s possible… i’m no psychology professional, but i’ve witnessed so many mentally sick people and i have witnessed the loneliness of the streets. sitting on these streets for so long, especially on a rainy day where you are confined to something with a roof (if you are that lucky), you have all these thoughts, all these struggles that naturally need to be vented in community, but being alone you have nobody with whom you can do that. i have caught myself talking to myself several times, and it is depressing. our energy is running low because it has rained all night and we slept pretty poorly on concrete because we were in an open area where we could be seen and could have easily been kicked out or arrested. it is hard to sleep soundly when you are nervous of being arrested.

well, the clock is ticking on my time here. other than the continual rain and a cloudy, depressing day, a lack of food and only $00.35 in our pockets… we’re doing well. thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

I’m a Martian.

“You into aliens? … aliens?” asked the young black man. He had a thick beard and clothes covered in dirt.

“Aliens?” I replied, not really sure where this conversation was going.

“Yeah, aliens. You know… Roswell, New Mexico… XFILES… Martians?”

“Oh… yeah. I know what you mean.”

“Are you into ‘em?”

“Umm… no, not really. <long pause> Are you?” I asked this hesitantly, not really wanting to know the answer.”

“Yeah…. they’re my people.”

“Your people?”

“Yeah…. my people. I’m a martian.”

“Umm… how are they your people?” I asked trying to avoid the awkward silence in which this … Martian who really looked like a normal, black man … would simply stare at me.

“They’re my people. You ever heard of Leviathan? I locked all their asses up. All of ’em. Black, Asian, Hindus, white people. I locked all of ‘em up in Leviathan.” He points to the sky. “You heard of Leviathan?”

“Umm… no?”

“Leviathan!?” he says excitedly.

“Oh, yeaah… Leviathan.” I’ve never heard of Leviathan unless you are talking of the creature in the bible that was some sort of dinasaur. I believe that was called leviathan or at least something close.

“It’s the prison up in space. Leviathan.”

“Right! I’ve heard of it,” I said.

This was the end of our conversation. I wasn’t sure whether I should stay and wait for him to come back to ask him why his skin wasn’t green or whether I should run … run and not stop. I chose to run. I’ve heard of an album by Lil Wayne, a rapper, where he sings one whole song about being a martian. I’m fairly sure, however, that this martian that I met had not just listened to that song but in fact had lost every ounce of sanity left in his mind. He as well as he could figure… was a martian.

Welcome to DC! So far it doesn’t seem so bad. It is not nearly as homeless friendly as everyone says. The parks never close, but you are not allowed to “camp.” I’m not sure how he considered us camping that first night since we had no sleeping bags, tents, or fires. I guess a small blanket and a backpack made into a pillow counts as camping. Anyway, we found a place to sleep that is somewhat out of sight, and we can see the back of the Lincoln Memorial from there. For my dearest Uncle Phil… I spent 2 dollars I made from playing guitar on the unabridged book of speeches by Abraham Lincoln and I am currently memorizing his second inaugural address. What else can you do while you’re homeless?

We went to a mission last night with a bunch of youth group kids from Alabama, Georgia, and Cincinatti, they were young and I’m sure quite intimidated by old scruffy homeless people such as ourselves. As we were leaving one group asked me to play my guitar and I did, but then they were called back into the room to have a meeting and one said, “Have a great night… ours is about to suuuck!” So, I replied with, “Well, we’re gonna go try to sleep on the street. It can’t be that bad.” Needless to say it sort of killed that conversation, but that is what I do… savor awkward moments. Hopefully it made them think about their situation.

So long for now…

Jack (Dimps)… (Tim) 

“Why don’t you get on the spaceship? Why don’t you get on the spaceship? It’s right there. I said it’s right there,” he siad.

“I’m not sure,” I replied.

“It’s supposed to be right there!” he says as he motions to a circle that was once the home of a tree but has been since filled with asphalt.

“Really? Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says sadly.

Jesus on the Streets’

I saw Jesus on the street the other night and He looked like a 25 year old black woman named Priscilla. Tim was on the phone so I was sitting on the corner with my Starbuck’s cup with a few cents at my feet. I looked up to see her with a huge smile on her face. She asked me if I wanted the rest of her chips from Chipotle, which of course I did! That right there pretty much made her my favorite person we’ve met out here She began to tell me how she didn’t believe in consequences and she thought there was a reason we had met that night. She told me a story of about a year ago when she was rollerblading and got hit by an SUV. They said she wouldn’t survive, and obviously, she did. She went on from there to tell me how much Jesus loved me. She went through the entire Gospel and got to the end and asked me what I thought. I told her I was a follower of Jesus and she got way excited! She asked why I didn’t stop her when she was telling me the Gospel, but it was so nice to hear from another person that I just let her go. She ended up giving us about $7 which was a huge blessing! But even without the money she blessed me so richly in other ways. She told me over and over how much she loved me and how much God loved me. WOW!! The joy, compassion, and excitement flowed as she talked. She made Jesus very happy simply by loving someone. You don’t have to give money to be a huge blessing. Respecting someone and talking the time to stop and talk can make their day or week…trust me. Be Jesus to someone today. Even if it isn’t a homeless person, you can go out of your way to show love and to well, look like Jesus. Oh how different this world would be if followers of Jesus looked like our Master. Love you all!

Shaggy

NYC: take 2

friends and family,

greetings from the city that never sleeps, and that includes us. it is much harder to get sleep up here because we have no secret place to sleep like we did down in philly, and the cops kick everyone out of central park at 1 a.m. we have heard that if they catch people in there after they’ve kicked everyone out they just arrest them which isn’t a part of the streets we would like to experience so we end up staying awake every night until 4:30ish when it begins to get light. then we go into the park in an out of sight spot and finally stop killing the sheep as they bounce over our heads. 

yesterday we went to redeemer pres, church, and for those of you who don’t know of it or of dr. tim keller you must check them out online. www.redeemer.com go listen to some of tim keller’s messages. they are wonderful. the place was great and the message was very good and convicting, and that was followed by the best soloist i think i’ve ever heard in person. it was unreal. this however is not outweighed by the fact that nobody sat near us unless they had to because of a lack of seats and the only conversation we had other than the necessary “get up and greet your neighbors” was one guy… oh wait he didn’t give conversation… he just patted ben on the shoulder, smiled and quickly walked by. sad since the confessional prayer was about helping the homeless and the poor and the widow and the orphan. 

it’s also amazing how ungrateful the homeless can be. we encountered this woman at a shelter for food last night. she was complaining quite loudly about how the portions were too small and that “if they’re going to do God’s work they must do it right” she then went on to tell us she was a prophet of God. mmhmm… time to move on i think because there is no winning a discussion against a “prophet of God.”

well, life had gotten a little better than when we first arrived. we have a list of some food places and found a better place to play for money. its better.. but still not great. well… i can smell myself contaminating this room and feel the need to move on.

we love you and appreciate your support every day!
dimps and shaggy 

the big apple. how i hate thee.

friends and family,

philly seems to have been merely a village compared to what we now see. just walking a block down these crowded streets is enough to make us need a nap. of course, living where we do.. we always need a nap. back in philly we had been kicked out of sleeping spot by the police so we slept in a park… just waiting to get kicked out which didn’t happen unless you count the sprinklers that turned on in the middle of the night… forcing us to move and sleep on wet grass… already wet… and cold. life is beautiful. so we caught our bus for NYC yesterday at 1:45 with $1.20 in our pockets. quite enough to get by in a city we’ve never been. at least not like this. anyway, central park closes at 1 a.m. so we slept by a fountain. the police here seem to be … rather rude. anyway, we slept until dawn and then moved into the park and slept till 10. so we actually got plenty of sleep. then we had this very long one way conversation with an interesting lady who claimed to be a traveler, but by that i’m guessing she means she travels from one side of central park to the other. she had about three different suitcases and plenty of pointless things. i think she said she was robbed and didn’t have the money to leave. anyway, she gave us some good info on shelters and such, but we had to walk further to get to lunch than we ever had to walk in a day in philly. life here will take much adjusting. other than food, there are people playing instruments everywhere you go, and despite the news that you could make 3 or 4 hundred bucks on times square i don’t think we’ll be making that much money here. i could be wrong… i usually am, but everything is so loud that you can barely hear yourself speak. let alone hear a guitar in passing. everyone is in such a hurry. right now we are in the Apple store on 59th and 5th. it’s madness in here… much like everywhere else in this city. 

we are being taught many things, and many of these things we did not expect to learn. many of them we did expect like exhaustion, hunger, frustration, loneliness. on the latter, life here gets more and more lonely. i can’t imagine doing this without ben. i have come to longer be surprised by the men walking down the streets talking to themselves. there is a need for people to let things out of themselves. i feel it. we need to talk and when you are all by yourself you are your only option… unless you invent someone which i have yet to do… but i might.  

we may have mentioned the police run-in we had in philly, but if we didn’t… we met this cop who was fairly nasty. he was perverted – yelling out to girls in the street. he was mean – calling a black woman an animal. anyway, we ended up telling him what we were doing because he seemed fairly relentless with his questions, and he told us that there are three categories of the homeless : 1. mentally ill 2. veterans who are mentally ill 3. crack addicts. it was sad to hear that the people “protecting” our streets have no care for the homeless but only for those that pay their taxes and therein pay them. i knew of this, but hearing it from horses mouth was sad.

well, we will be here for a while, but i’m not sure how often we will be able to get into this place to use the computers, for we smell much like a dumpster. we got to take our first shower in two weeks this past wednesday, and after we got out, i noticed that before i had even put my dirty clothes back on that i still smelled awful. nice.

well, ben is back from being lazy… we move on now.

dimps. 

long weekend…

we learned a lot this weekend and God stretched us in some major ways. we had our hardest night on the streets yet on friday, but saturday went much smoother and we were able to make some money. we bought our bus tickets to head to new york this thursday, and i know that will be a very trying experience up there. we are exhausted already from our time here in philly and it seems like we’ve been out here for months. i’m sure with the size of new york the experience will only be more difficult.

thank you all so much for the comments you leave, and we’ve had a couple good questions asked to us so we wanted to take some time to answer them. we have chosen to not tell people the reason we are out here. we know that if people knew we were here by choice they would treat us differently, and it would be more dangerous for us because they would expect us to have money so it would be more threatening for us physically. it’s interesting because the only people who ask us why we are here are those who arern’t on the street. it seems like with those on the street it’s kind of a don’t ask don’t tell type of thing. we have had a number of non street people ask us where we came from and why we’re here so we have tried hard to come up with something to tell them. we didn’t want to lie to people,  but because the job market in the midwest is so bad right now, most people assume that we couldn’t find a job over there so we headed here because there is more potential up here. jobs are still scarce around here, but there is more available than back around dayton. most people are satisfied with something like that and don’t seem to ask much more about it. as to our age out here a lot of people assume we are just travelers and trying to make it as musicians because we have a guitar. we have actually met a number of people our age who are at hard spots in their lives right now and are living on the streets as well. a lot of people assume we are drug addicts because they don’t understand why people our age would already be homeless, but like i said it is fairly common for 20 somethings to be out here because we have lost so many factor type jobs in the states.

recently God has really been teaching me how much He loves people. He loves all people right where they are in their life which is so hard for us to imagine. we try so hard to make God love us by getting caught up in religion, when our religious practices are nothing but “filthy rags” before God. if i can encourage you wtih anything right now just know that no matter where you are in life God loves you more than you can imagine. the love of God and the grace of God are such amazing gifts! don’t burn yourself out working so hard to make Him love you because nothing you do can make Him love you anymore or any less.

i know these weren’t the best answers to your questions but we only had the internet for a few minutes so we had to hurry. but thank you all for the posts and the questions…keep them coming! we love to hear from you all and appreciate your prayers so much.

shaggy

clear skies…

friends and family,

we appreciate you all for following us along our journey via this site. it means a lot to us since we cannot keep connection with anyone other than our family who would suffer from not knowing how we were doing. it is great to know we are loved. right now there is a really loud and annoying man getting angry at Verizon because they won’t sell him a phone for 25 dollars which is the price it would be if he started a new contract, but since he lost his phone the cheapest phone he can get is 195. this guy is pretty angry and is insulting Verizon. interesting where our priorities are now… because i’ll be insulting the rich people at the bars that won’t give us money for food later. just kidding… i’ll be nice, but i will honestly at least be thinking it.

the mood swings of this life are so so much to handle. those of you that know me know i was voted “most moody” my senior year of high school, and this is driving me crazy. you’re angry because it’s hot and you’re sweating waiting in line at a mission for food, and then you’re ecstatic because you’re full. then you’re angry because you’re broke and can’t get any money for dinner, but then somebody puts in a dollar and you dream of a double cheeseburger with a side of unhealthy and all of a sudden you’re happy again. it may not seem like much because i’m too tired to truly describe it all, but trust me that alone is exhausting… as if the rest of this life isn’t.

well, it’s back to the street. we are doing well, and we haven’t lost too much weight. we really do eat well sometimes, and those times hold us over to the next one for the most part. also, don’t worry about danger. a lot of people were worried about our safety from the dangers of the city, which do exist, but since we are downtown in the hustle and bustle tourist areas life is pretty much safe. we are still watching our backs, but there are reasons you see so many homeless in the places you visit… it’s because it is safe to be among groups… especially groups of beautiful rich police gaurded people.

have a wonderful weekend!
dimps

if hepC doesn’t get us then lung cancer will…

good afternoon friends and family,

it’s been a week since i’ve seen my home town, and a what a week it has been. i’m not sure what even to say about our journey. it feels like it has been a month already. tuesday night we were approached by a park guard and he told us we couldn’t sleep there anymore, but it’s alright because we found the perfect place to sleep. it’s kind of hidden in the bushes down by the delaware river. there are others sleeping about thirty feet from where we are, but i don’t think they know we live there.

it’s amazing how twisted the minds of the homeless can be. they say that it is the right thing not to ask a guy who gave them a 20 for more because “you never know… he could be a millionare one day and he could take care of you.” sadly, the homeless are content being homeless because as a man told us yesterday… it doesn’t matter where you go there’s always food. we have rarely worried about food, and we rarely pay for food. there’s always either food to be “recycled” if you will or food being given out. it’s amazing. most guys that we meet are happy guys and have lots to talk about, but when in the public eye you must keep up the appearance of being pathetic in order to make a buck or two. this is sad because all this means is that missions and others that give out free food are only furthering homelessness. these guys have no reason to “get back on their feet” because life is relatively stress free where they are. this also makes helping as an individual difficult because whatever you do it just continues the cycle. so what do we do? ben and i aren’t sure… but we have plenty of time to figure that out. please help us through prayer and thoughts of your own as to ways to help in the future.

well, keep us in your thoughts.
we’re doing well.

dimps