This week at Love City!
Check out what happened this week at Love City!
A STORY FOR CHRISTMAS...
We don't usually share these kinds of stories about our neighbors, but this story deserved to be told if nothing else for the encouragement that love brings.
Every place has a rhythm and Porkland's rhythm starts out with inventory pick up for the week every Monday. We have some supplies delivered and go pick up others. If we are smoking meat that week we purchase the full amount of meat to smoke on Mondays. When we closed down after lunch on Monday October 11, we had a full stock of food for the week, as well as two cases of rib tips we were set to smoke the next day.
On Tuesday morning October 12, Shawn and I woke up and got ready to go to work. I was headed to Mighty Oak to have our morning meeting with our teaching staff at 8am and Shawn was headed to Porkland to prepare the list of tasks for the day and have a morning meeting with his team at 9am. I had just finished our morning meeting at the school and was getting ready to welcome students for the day when Shawn called and asked me to pull up the cameras from last night at Porkland, someone had broken in.
I immediately pulled up the video recordings of the restaurant and quickly found footage from 3am that showed someone climbing through a window near the smokers, carrying off all the rib tips we were going to smoke that week, bags of drinks from the fridge, the cash register drawer and even putting on a few shirts from our t-shirt sale display before climbing back out the window 15 minutes later. I started saving video clips to my phone and texting them to Shawn as I found them.
It was clear to see form the behavior of the person on the video that he was high or under the influence of something. I snapped a picture from the video when he turned toward one of the cameras and sent it to Shawn. By then the team at Porkland had arrived for work and started cleaning and putting the restaurant back together to open later that morning. They cleaned the kitchen, and we found an empty cash drawer and replaced all the change to get the register operational again.
Upon seeing the video and the picture of the person that broke in, Shawn thought he knew who it was, but the night vision video was still hard to get an absolute confirmation. In the register drawer that he stole, we had a credit card that was used for buying supplies at Porkland. We reported the card stolen and soon got an alert from the credit card company that someone was trying to use the card down the street at Shaheen's Department Store. Shawn called Mr. Shaheen, told him what had happened at Porkland and asked if they had any video footage of the person who had attempted to use our credit card. A few minutes later they called back and texted over a clear picture of the person that had broken into Porkland.
His name is David. We first met David almost five years ago, not long after we had moved to the neighborhood. He was sitting on the steps at the Mackin building bruised and bloodied from being in a fight with a drug dealer, lucky to get away with his life. We ran into him in the neighborhood many times after that, Shawn got to know him and his story and tried to help with food or just an ear to listen whenever we could.
We hadn't seen him for a few months when he broke into Porkland, but it would be lying to say it didn't sting, that someone you had known and been loving on for years broke in and stole hundreds of dollars worth of food and cash. Our team at Porkland was ready to send him to jail the minute he surfaced again, but Shawn decided to wait and see what happened.
About two weeks later Shawn and I were coming back from checking on Porkland one Sunday afternoon and we rode through the alley behind the old St John's church. There had been some illegal dumping there in recent days which we had cleaned up and we were checking to make sure it hadn't started again. We pulled up behind the old parsonage next to the church and saw a few people going through a pile of metal they had pulled out of the abandoned house next door. In the middle of the group, was David.
Shawn got out of the truck and went over to the group to check on them, to make sure they cleared the alleyway when they finished picking through the pile. David came over to say hi to Shawn and I saw them talking from my position in the passenger seat of or truck. Shawn finished talking and got back in the truck and we pulled off. "How did that go?," I asked. "Well," Shawn said, "I looked him right in the eye, and told him there was nothing he could ever ever do that would make me not love him."
The next day, at 9am during the Porkland team morning meeting, David knocked on the glass doors to Porkland. Shawn let him in and asked him to join the team for the meeting. He sat down at the table with the team and listened as they talked about how they were each doing that day, any struggles they were having and also the task list to get the restaurant open for the day. Shawn asked David to share some of his story. David proceeded to tell his life story, what his childhood was like, how is parents weren't really in his life, and how he started using drugs when he was 15.
David started crying as he finished telling his story. "I'm just so sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I broke in here and stole from you all. I'm tired of being on dope, I just don't want to do it anymore." One of the women that worked at Porkland at the time got up and came over to David and just hugged him. She has lived in Portland her entire life, and in a strange coincidence or opportunity for restoration, how ever you want to look at it, her deceased boyfriend who she had been with over 20 years first introduced David to heroin when he was 15. They both hugged each other and cried. They cried healing tears for both of them.
David repeated his desire to change and Shawn offered to help him figure out rehab and take him there. He just needed to come back the next morning at 9 and they would go from there. The next morning, David showed up right on time. Shawn helped find a rehab facility in Elizabethtown a good distance away from the neighborhood and all the old familiar temptations. That afternoon Shawn and Ethan from our team, took David to get some new clothes, and food to get ready to go to rehab. They drove him down to E-Town and he checked into a residential rehab facility.
It's been a little over two full months now that David has been in rehab in E-Town. He calls Shawn about once a week just to say hi and let him know how he's doing. He has stayed sober the whole time. Shawn never misses an opportunity to tell him how proud he is of him. For Christmas he asked if we could bring down 22 Love City t-shirts. He wanted every man in the rehab program to get one and they were all eager to sport Love City gear, as David had continually talked about Love City to everyone who was there. Last week after Porkland closed for the day, Shawn loaded up the truck with the t-shirts and drove down to E-Town to drop them off for David. They were a huge hit.
Last night David called Shawn to wish us a Merry Christmas and tell Shawn he loved him. While we haven't been able to see David since he went into the program, he sounds sober, clear minded and stronger every time he calls.
We have had a lot of things happen since we moved to Portland. We've seen people come and go, we've lost kids to murder, and we've had kids go on to college and change their and their families lives. We've taken people to rehab at The Healing Place only to have them beat us back to the neighborhood after dropping them off. We've seen a community of strong resilient people come together to love one another. This is one of those stories, like a great golf shot in a terrible round of golf, that will keep you coming back to play, when you're about to give up.
We just want to encourage everyone, especially this Christmas. You never know how the things that happen will be used for good. So this Christmas, ask for eyes to see the good, it's always there, just waiting to show itself to the world.
Merry Christmas,
Shawn and Inga Arvin
CHRISTMAS BOXES 2021
On Tuesday we had over 50 volunteers come together to pack over 2200 food boxes for the West End. As the boxes were coming off the line, we had over 30 different churches and organizations pull up to load the boxes and take them out to their neighbors across the West End. It was a beautiful day of neighbors loving neighbors! Thank you to everyone who donated to cover the cost of the food and came out to help pack boxes!
PARTNER WITH US
At Love City we believe in time, talent and treasure.
Mighty Oak Academy Amazon Wish List
We're coming up to the end of the semester and also the end of the year. Mighty Oak can still use some supplies, especially snacks! If you would like to partner with the school, you can visit our Amazon wish list and purchase items to ship directly to the school. Visit this link to view the list: https://a.co/77dqBIT
If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.
Please consider partnering financially with Love City. We are looking for sponsors for students at Mighty Oak Academy as well as partners to help fund construction of our new preschool. Click the button below to donate today.