LifeHouse of Orange County

Christmas at the Cruz home – and the home of others who volunteer at LifeHouse -was a little different this year. Once we were done with our family events, we all converged on the riverbed by the Honda Center to serve a meal of ziti pasta with salad, garlic bread, sweet white corn and more to our friends – many of whom are homeless. It was a beautiful, bright and sunny California day and our friends who came to eat with us made it even sunnier!

Two of the greatest quotes for the day “Every time you guys come here it’s Christmas for me” and “where is your church? I want to come. If these are the kinds of people who attend your church, I want to come to your church.”He was referring to the amazing volunteers who happily come every Sunday to  provide a wonderful meal. I told him, they are all from different churches or no churches at all – and they all LOVE to come and help our friends who live outside and who need to eat a wholesome warm meal.
We served about 70 homeless men and women and children on Christmas afternoon with about 20 people  volunteers who gladly gave their time. All of us left feeling more blessed than those who received the meal.

LifeHouse is dedicated to changing lives on both sides of the tables. Those who receive and those who give – doing what we do, our lives are forever changed. What a privilege to do what we do. I hope all of you had a Christmas that you will NEVER forget and one that has made a difference on someone’s life! Merry CHRISTmas!

We will be serving our homeless friends a warm wholesome meal on Sundays at the riverbed. Guess what day Christmas falls on this year… yup. On Sunday. And we will still be there!

I wanted to take the time to thank the companies that are donating food to LifeHouse to help make lives a little more bearable.  Parties by Panache is a world class catering company located in North Orange County. I can speak first hand about this caterer. Hollis O’Brien is the owner and I used to work with her. Not only is she donating a pasta dish for our Sunday meal, but she has supplied LifeHouse with abundant fresh food from the local Trader Joe’s. She is also one of the most fair and respectful employers I have ever worked with.

Another local company that gives to LifeHouse each week is Fill In The Hole Donuts and More in Yorba Linda. Each Sunday we receive boxes of wonderfulness that our homeless guys LOVE. From your tradition glazed donuts to HUGE baked cinnamon rolls these pastries are hard to resist!

Accessory Geeks is yet another generous company. They sell any and all types of gadgets for your electronic devices. Karen Kang, VP of Accessory Geeks  has given LifeHouse bags and bags of clothes that we hand out to the homeless, donated proceeds from the sale of products, has provided for feeding the homeless financially and continues to partner with us.

Thank you all for partnering with LifeHouse!

What does your family’s Thanksgiving dinner look like?

Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy and all the fixings? At the riverbed, we also will have quite a wonderful feast for the homeless. Our dining room table is 48 feet long and our family is about 125 and growing!

In addition to a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, we give out books, blankets, tarps, warm clothes, anything we can get our hands on.

We serve the homeless and needy each and every Sunday a hearty, warm, healthy meal in addition to a bag or two of staples that they can take with them to eat later.

Our plates will be overflowing! We will be serving the following yummy food to our homeless friends:

Roasted Turkey

Ham

Seasoned twice-baked mashed potatoes

Kicked up stuffing

Traditional greenbean casserole

Cornbread casserole

Roasted turkey herb gravy

Cranberry Dressing

Dinner Rolls

Green Salad

Fruit Salad

Lattice top cherry pie With Whipped Cream

Apple Pie with Whipped Cream

Come and join in as we celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends! Warm coats, socks, sweatshirts, pants, tarps and sleeping bags are always appreciated! 

Sincerely,

Noel & Julie Cruz

LifeHouse Ministry Orange County

voice: 714.756.0506

Sunday, we had a reprieve from the pelting rains that hit Orange County. We served 220 piece of roasted chicken, rice pilaf, and fresh vegetable to about 50 people – a small group as we expected; the beginning of the month and the driving rains kept the homeless away. We have started serving at 3:00 instead of 4:00 during the time change. None of us want to be in the riverbed when it’s dark.

Today John gave a gift to a friend who lives under the bridge close to where we serve. He designed and built him a lean-to-tent. Our homeless friend stays nice and dry during the rains (unless the water draining off the street finds its way through his encampment) but the wind chill factor is brutal. He lives 20 feet above a flowing river that creates a constant wind tunnel. when the temp ‘outside’ is in the 40′s it is in the 30′s under the bridge.  This man is in his 50′s, has had a number of strokes, is a diabetic and had a few heart attacks the docs have said. Even the healthiest, stoutest person would have a hard time living in conditions like this… day after day – night after bone chilling night.

After the feed, several of us walked along the river to get to our friends ‘house’.  He was hunkered down under his layers of blankets and sleeping bags his head faced into the wind so it didnt blow into his face. We converged onto his camp site, set up his new tent, chatted with him shortly and the walked off into the sunset.

This new tent design will need to be tweeked a little, but this will enable some of the guys who couldn’t get a tent into their area to have some sort of shelter. We will rely on the homeless to give us ideas on how to improve on it. We are calling this the Ishville Tent.

if anyone can help me insert pictures… much appreciated. info@lifehouseministryoc.com

What moves you? What do you care deeply about? Your family? Your pet? Global warming? Recycling? Politics?

No matter what it is that stirs up your emotions, consider the dirty stuffed animal that at some point was held and valued by a young child.  SOMEone out there loved their Care Bear, but at some point, this symbol of comfort, happiness and joy was tossed out.

There are 35,000 homeless men, women and children in Orange County alone.

I don’t do guilt – it’s terribly nonproductive. What I do is facts. The homeless numbers don’t lie. The reasons for homelessness are complicated.  From drug and alcohol addiction to mental illness and every stop in between. The cycle of hopelessness draws people into despair. And at times, self medicating – helping to at least fade the harshness of their lives seems like the least cruel thing to do to oneself.

Our friends and we want to be there to help.  In whatever capacity the many people who partner with LifeHouse can do it; with their time, their resources, their prayers, their friendships to the homeless – whatever it is – we consider each person we serve as our friend. We always look at ways to be the good news – with just a touch of an arm,  or using their names and remembering what they were dealing with last week. I know when someone at the grocery store remembers me from last week, I feel valued. What more does someone who lives in a tent by the riverbed need but to be shown respect, honor, and caring.

People are not trash. People are you and me; they are that guy asleep on the bus bench, the bearded man who babbles on to himself, the lady pushing her cart loaded to the sky with her life’s treasures. Take the time to smile at someone you meet that you don’t feel all too comfortable with. You might not make your day any better but  you’ll make an impression on that one person you smiled at.

“I mean, I don’t think I’m alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind’s eye. You don’t think they were cute like every other baby?” –Dustin Hoffman

We had another big feed at the riverbed. probably 100 people. we served salmon, grilled chicken, asparagus, baby potatoes, tamales and more from the Ritz Carlton in Dana point. They loved the food. It was a VERY challenging day, we had 3 large food pickups in the morning, lots of food to heat up, cut up, chop up, pack up, and serve up. As we were about to leave the house to the riverbed, we discovered the battery was dead in our truck… with a quick swap, we were on the road.

Thank you to all of the WONDERful partners in this endeavor to help the homeless and the poor. We are seeing so many more mentally ill friends who simple cant function in a normal world so their only choice is to live outside and try to survive. not too much gov assist for these folks and they are really the ones who need. They make me so sad. I hope and pray that LifeHouse and all those who give towards this can make huge change and positive impact in their lives.

Thank you for your continued support of LifeHouse! It cannot be done without you.

Summer traditionally brings a larger number of people to soup kitchens and food lines. But this summer, LifeHouse has seen a 45% increase in the number of people who need a hot meal and a few staples to take with them on Sundays.

LifeHouse started feeding at the riverbed 1 1/2 years ago with about 12 people coming to eat. Yesterday, we served nearly 150!! And that number has been consistently growing since the weather warmed up!

We need your help! Without your financial support, LifeHouse wont be able to keep up with this increasing demand. No one needs to tell you how hard life has become for some in Orange County. We know first hand how jobs can be lost in a heart beat and to regain employment, a difficult task at best! My own family member has been aggressively seeking employment for almost a year with nothing in site.

All of us who volunteer their time, money, and energies to LifeHouse want to do what we can to make this time just a bit more bearable.

Here is a typical Sunday:

100 cups of fresh ground coffee
5 gallons Iced Tea
120 cans of fruit and/or veggies
130 cans of chicken or tuna
90 jars of peanut butter
250 bottles of vitamin water or energy drinks
150 bottles of water
300 granola bars
130 bananas
500 Slim Jim beef sticks

And that’s not including the actual meal:
This Sunday was Teriyaki chicken over white rice with Chinese coleslaw
40 pounds of chicken
5 gallons of white rice
5 gallons of coleslaw
5 gallons of fresh green salad

Each person is given a clamshell serving plate for their food, a packet with eating utensils and salt and pepper, and a handiwipe, cups for their drinks, bags to take their supplies home with.

Please consider a donation of any amount – every dollar helps – . It’s simple!

I have read some interesting comments regarding the Kelly Thomas killing in Fullerton – some outraged at the police officers who are involved, some outraged at the parents benefiting from his death, some people comment about how sick they are of having to live and work where the homeless are.

I am actually glad that his death has stirred up so many feelings and has caused so many to express these opinions – whether negative or positive. This only shows that the homeless situation should never be ignored. Living w/ the homeless close by isn’t the most comfortable thing to do – especially when they are mentally ill. Most would like them to all go away but gratefully there are people who go out of their way to help them. We deal with both ends of the spectrum at LifeHouse, we try to help people see differently the lives of the homeless men and women who live in the brokenness of their worlds and the pain that this causes their families as well as themselves. Oftentimes leading to their death.

I can certainly appreciate what people say who are negative about the life Kelly Thomas lived – homelessness is one of those hot topics that will likely never be resolved, at least not anytime soon – But, we all have to wrestle with our views on homelessness. Out of this provocative event, my hope and prayer is that more people will man or woman up and face the challenge of helping the homeless. We either step up to the plate and help others who are in need or pretend that the broken don’t exist. And our children will usually follow suit with our choices.

Thank you for your continued support of LifeHouse! It cannot be done without you.

Summer traditionally brings a larger number of people to soup kitchens and food lines. But this summer, LifeHouse has seen a 45% increase in the number of people who need a hot meal and a few staples to take with them on Sundays.

LifeHouse started feeding at the riverbed 1 1/2 years ago with about 12 people coming to eat. Yesterday, we served nearly 150!! And that number has been consistently growing since the weather warmed up!

We need your help! Without your financial support, LifeHouse wont be able to keep up with this increasing demand. No one needs to tell you how hard life has become for some in Orange County. We know first hand how jobs can be lost in a heart beat and to regain employment, a difficult task at best! My own family member has been aggressively seeking employment for almost a year with nothing in site.

All of us who volunteer their time, money, and energies to LifeHouse want to do what we can to make this time just a bit more bearable.

Here is a typical Sunday:

100 cups of fresh ground coffee
5 gallons Iced Tea
120 cans of fruit and/or veggies
130 cans of chicken or tuna
90 jars of peanut butter
250 bottles of vitamin water or energy drinks
150 bottles of water
300 granola bars
130 bananas
500 Slim Jim beef sticks

And that’s not including the actual meal:
This Sunday was Teriyaki chicken over white rice with Chinese coleslaw
40 pounds of chicken
5 gallons of white rice
5 gallons of coleslaw
5 gallons of fresh green salad

Each person is given a clamshell serving plate for their food, a packet with eating utensils and salt and pepper, and a handiwipe, cups for their drinks, bags to take their supplies home with.

Please consider a donation of any amount – every dollar helps – . It’s simple!