All Donations are DOUBLED as Street Life is Launching a Recovery Program.

We have spent over 20 years building relationships and trust with our friends on the street in San Mateo and Santa Clara County. Now, it's time for us to leverage those relationships and launch the next big step for Street Life, the culmination of what we've been working towards the Homeless to Healthy program.

The Homeless to Healthy program is a multi-faceted one-year program we have created in partnership with established charities like LifeMoves that would be capable of eventually taking up to thirty people off the street each year, and fully integrating them back into society. As part of the plan, we intend to establish a Street Life facility, take people off the street who we have relationships with, and put them in dedicated housing provided by a partner of ours. We can then assign a caseworker we will hire to work with the participants directly and provide classes to help them conquer addiction and find employment, all while nurturing growth and providing a new, healthy community to guide and strengthen them.

This is clearly a huge new undertaking for Street Life, but we believe it is what God is calling us to do. Incredibly, a local family has agreed to match up to one million in funds donated to the program, greatly increasing the power of any donations made to the program, and further helping to radically change lives in our shared community. That means any donation you give will be DOUBLED, no matter their size. A $1000 dollar donation becomes $2000! This could be the perfect opportunity for you to use any resources you have to help make a real, impactful, and lasting change in our community. If we can raise a total of two million dollars for the program, we can get it off the ground and guarantee it will be able to run for years to come.

The program has the potential to completely change lives. With Street Life and partners taking care of the housing and food of people enrolled in the program, the participants would be able to focus solely on improving themselves and their lives, free from many of the distractions and temptations of life on the streets. While many programs provide one of these services, there are very few that provide all of them together. By providing all of the services together as part of a singular, coherent, overarching Christian program, people will not have to fend for themselves after one step. We believe we can achieve significantly higher completion and retention rates for people in our more holistic program. There are currently no faith-based rehabilitation or recovery programs in San Mateo County that we know of, despite the fact that Christian recovery programs have been shown to have significantly higher recovery rates than non-faith-based programs. We can use this program to meet a real unmatched need and help change lives with the transformative power of Christ.

We see the need, and so do our partners. Dr. Greenberg, Vice President of Life Moves, a non-profit that oversees all low-income housing in San Mateo County, recently told us: “the number one barrier for our population… is addiction disorders… so an outpatient faith-based recovery program like Street Life [is creating] is just really important… Our partnership with Street Life Ministries is just critical, so many people find recovery through faith-based approaches, and Street Life's approach to recovery services is really just critical to so many of our clients.”

The biggest problem many existing recovery programs face is finding people to enroll in them. From our 20 years of relationship building, we have homeless folks ready and eager to enroll in this program and we know how to help them. We just need the resources to do it, which is where YOU can help out.

This recovery program is going to dramatically improve our community and you can be a part of making that happen. You can go to this link for more information, or use this link to donate now. Make sure to include Homeless to Healthy in the memo line of your check, Paypal, or Venmo donations to have your donation MATCHED!

With love, and God Bless

-Pastor Dave

P. S.

This is a massive step for us. We cannot do this without help. We need donations, we need prayer, and we will need volunteers. Please pray about this, and if God calls you to help, please join us on this journey.

Kev’s Korner

Feels like a long time since I’ve written. It’s only been a month, but it sure feels longer. I guess sometimes I just lose track of time. Street Life has weathered the Pandemic, it seems, and our numbers are returning stronger than ever. It’s been a long, rough road, but I think we’re getting back to where we were before. We’re going through a truckload of food, too, which reminded me of an incident way back when I first started coming to Street Life…

I think it was winter of 2012, or the early months of 2013. I’d been showing up to Street Life for maybe a month or two. Anyways, toward the end of a Street Life night, David Shearin and I were talking about stuff, and he asked me if I could get more people to come check out the ministry. I said sure, but was he really ready for his numbers to go that high? We both laughed, but I decided right then that this would be my show of power. I planned to bring so many people that there would be no way to feed them all. It would be epic, and I would show them all that I could do what I said I could do. Now I guess it should be noted here that at this time I was still homeless, had just recently quit doing drugs, and was still an avowed satanist. I still wasn’t thinking quite right, is the point I’m trying to make.

I went everywhere I could think of, and anywhere someone said “Hey Kev !”, I asked them for a favor – show up at Street Life on Monday. That’s all. You don’t have to be a Christian, you don’t gotta be anything you don’t want to be, but do me a solid and show up on Monday. I did that everywhere I could all week. I knew that there was NO WAY there would be enough food to handle all the people that would be there. Street Life would be humiliated, and I would just shrug and say I told you so afterwards….

So Monday comes. People start showing up at Street Life. LOTS of people. I’m talking concert crowd status. Now remember, this is back in late 2012/early 2013 – Street Life was in its’ infancy still. We had an old beat-up bluish van we used to deliver food to the old site (Ms. Shirley’s driveway behind 7/11 on Broadway) and it wasn’t equipped like our vans are now. They would put the food trays on the floor of the van, so there was next to no room for much else. Food trays, water, and paper plates, that was about all it could hold. I think back then that the norm for a Monday was 30-40 people, and the amount of food that got brought down from the kitchen was based entirely on the average numbers.

I had started counting people. I figured I had at least tripled the average Monday night, if not more. I never finished an exact count, but there must have been around 120 people, easy. I started outright laughing when the food van pulled in. My plans were about to come to fruition. I kid you not when I say that they pulled out FOUR banquet trays of food and a large bowl of salad, plus a case or two of water bottles and paper plates. The food line formed, and it was HUGE. It stretched almost to the corner by 7/11. No way did they bring enough food…

Anyways, they started serving. Again, I have to repeat – FOUR banquet trays of food and a large bowl of salad. Back then, we just served until we ran out. I had this big ol’ smirk on my face just knowing they’d have to turn away most of the crowd because they’d run out of food. I watched and waited, until I realized that HALF of the line had been served, and there was still plenty of food. The smirk came off my face when I saw that the ENTIRE line had been served and people were coming back for seconds. Incredibly, they had served upwards of 120 people (I still believe it was more like 150) not just ONE meal, but seconds too, on FOUR banquet trays of food and a large bowl of salad.

It took a little bit for me to get my head around it, but it was on that night that I believe I witnessed my first miracle. You see, I knew all the logistics going in – there wasn’t a snow cone’s chance in Hell that they’d brought enough food. Back then, we couldn’t afford to send “backup trays” of food down. I’m telling the truth when I keep saying FOUR banquet trays of food and a large bowl of salad. That was it – 4 trays and salad. Every single person that showed got at least one meal, if not more, and the plates were PACKED. It defies all logic. There is no other explanation to me other than Divine Intervention. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear to you all it’s exactly what happened.

The other day, David and I were talking, and he said something that resonated with me. He said that that night, I thought I was going to humiliate David’s ministry, but it’s not his – it’s God’s ministry, and God will not be humiliated. Message received, Lord. I’ll never test you again.

Father God, I’ll never forget that night. Since then, I have rejected satanism, become a Christian, and been baptized. I tell anyone that will listen that they need only to come to Street Life if they want to witness the Power of God. I know You are there – I can feel You everytime I step on that Lot. I pray that others can feel You too, and are comforted in their time of need. Watch over us all, Father, and keep us warm in Your Loving Embrace. Amen.

See you on the streets.