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Magic of Twitter Brings Miracle to Homeless Family

Published by December 19th, 2009 in My Big Mouth

Last night I was part of a miracle that I still cannot believe happened. I had to get up this morning just to watch the video a few times for it all to sink in. This miracle was broadcast to the world in real-time via social media. And to be honest Twitter played the biggest role in giving smiles to a homeless family’s first night in shelter system.

Instead of writing a bunch of words I thought I’d cut out a few tweets so you can see the miracle unfold just like everyone else did last night.

The winter shelter is no place for children so we drive families to a hotel and voucher them until we can find a more permanent solution. This single mom was living in a van with her 9 year-old son. When the city towed their van they lost EVERYTHING! I checked the family into hotel and then took them grocery shopping. Mom told me they desperately needed a change of clothes. Another woman at the shelter has an urgent need for clothes so I broadcast the needs via twitter.

Almost instantly Pastor Matthew Barnett from Los Angeles Dream Center sent me the following direct messages.

Because the only clothes this mother and child had were on their backs I didn’t feel we could wait another day. I searched the GPS on my phone and the closest store was Walmart. I tweet I was headed there. Soon I received this.

Pastor Matthew called me. He asked me to pick out a nice toy for the boy and suggested a Nintendo DS. The Los Angeles Dream Center is the church that helped me off the streets. Matthew Barnett has been caring for homeless people for over a decade. He knows people without housing cannot carry lots of stuff so a portable video game is a perfect gift. Even typing this now thinking about last night I get emotional. Last night I was a wreck!

I opened the Ustream app and started to broadcast over the net. Ustream cuts up the clips so I edited them together. The following YouTube video is what I broadcast from my phone last night.

Response was immediate and overwhelming. Here are just a very few:

My friend Kat Armstrong wrote a post even before we all got home. Please read her powerful post here.

For as long as I can remember I have hated this time of year. As a tradition I keep wherever I live ‘Christmas free’ to escape the holiday madness. No Christmas music, no Christmas decorations, and especially NO CHRISTMAS TREES! To reflect my holiday ‘mood’ I even change my avatar to the mean Grinch. While rushing to Walmart I must have been out of my mind and tweet that if someone helped this 9 year-old boy I’d change my avatar, and if someone helped the woman with clothes I’d get a tree.

I will be getting a tree this weekend! Merry Christmas!

Last night I learned that to see miracles one must be in a place where miracles happen – that place is helping other people.

Thanks to Union Rescue Mission and PATH Achieve Glendale for taking care of homeless families at the winter shelters around Los Angeles. Very special thanks to Matthew Barnett and everyone who donated to help give a little extra love this holiday season!

Your life is being broadcast

Published by October 22nd, 2008 in Character, Church, Community, Future, Internet, Life's Lessons, My Big Mouth, Technology

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Wow! It’s been a long time since I made a post, and a lot has happened. Actually, I have like 20 posts in me, but because in the past my being open and honest was not allowed – I was scared – so I kept silent!

I wanted to write about my new job and my new boss, yet, because I knew when I posted a link to Brad’s blog he would find this blog, I kept procrastinating, and now it’s a mute point. Interesting enough, I did not actually realize how toxic some of my last situations were until I tried to function normally in a healthy environment. I mean, who else would have the coolest workplace, and be open to blogging, and open to voicing a difference of opinion than the guy behind churchmarketingsucks.com – yet I was conditioned for the last several years to not be myself – and it showed, because I was still too scared to be open and honest even though I was in a safe place.

I also wanted to write about control. As I went into this new job I worked extra hard to allow things to evolve around me without any interference by me. We either become control freaks, or become passive, in an attempt to avoid legitimate suffering, yet it is by going through legitimate suffering head on that we grow spiritually and emotionally. It was a great experience going into an organization and not as the boss. Nothing happened “my way”, and I loved every growth-packed minute of it. I actually believe that every mega church leader should go find a small church and work for two weeks each year as a lay person, and not be allowed to influence any decision. Basically seeing life from the other side. Not being the boss for a change was one of the best things that could have happened to me, but that is not the topic of this post.

There is so much that I want to write, and I wish my written communication skills were better so I could effectively communicate all that is my heart. I do regret allowing the oppression of my past situations to continue on into my new life. It’s not their fault, it’s mine! I made the choice to keep quiet, and that was the wrong choice!

What I feel compelled to write about is a change I see as our society becomes more voyeuristic and technology becomes more mobile. Like I said in the last post, I’m sure someone has already touched this topic so I may be behind, but it is very, very important. Now, it has actually come to life for me!

A few weeks back ICFG had to lay off 25 people, and I was one of them. For the record I want to say that although there is no easy way to let people go, ICFG had to make a hard decision, and they took very good care of us. You can tell if an organization has Jesus or not just by how they treat employees that are exiting, and former employees that for whatever reason moved on. Even though my time was short with Foursquare I am extremely impressed with their compassion and forward thinking.

The interesting part to all this is “Black Tuesday”, the day the layoffs took place, was broadcast over the internet via Twitter and Facebook. Some I have selected as a favorite on my Twitter page, which you can read here . Brad was twittering as it went down, and so were a few others in the office. It was weird, yet it is the future of how things are going to be – all of our lives will be broadcast over the internet – like it or not!

I believe the idea of a “big brother” watching us started with George Orwell’s movie 1984, but it’s not the government that is the soon-to-be big participator in broadcasting EVERYTHING, it’s little sister, Aunt Ruby, Johnny down the street, and Yilmaz over in Turkey. As we become more of a mobile technology world, more of OUR world will be broadcast to the Internet – AND NOT BY CHOICE!

As with anything there is good and bad. The good is people who do not have integrity will no longer be able to hide. The new world is all about transparency and vulnerability – everything will be exposed. The bad is there is no privacy anymore – none at all!

No matter if you like this or not, as in the case of “Black Tuesday” being broadcast over the internet, I didn’t have a choice, and neither do you. This train has left the station, and if you are not being real with people, LOTS of people will find out – and sooner than a you can click on a send button!