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This rescue mission was successfully
established with support of the AGRM Expansion Programs.
Together
We Rescue Bridgeport
It was getting dark as we drove into Bridgeport, CT.
We were late due to plane mechanical troubles. We were to be at the
BRIDGEPORT RESCUE MISSION at 4 pm so that we could get a tour of their
newly leased facility, a 1500 seat former Catholic Church, with dining
facilities and 17 room Parish House. I hoped I could find the building in
6 pm darkness.
As we turned off Main Street, I noticed the number of
burned out and abandoned buildings. A number of young men were "hanging"
on the corners, and I wasn't sure it was where a stranger wanted to be
after dark. We turned and now I could see the mission, but I could not get
to it. The police had put up barriers due to drive by shootings. So we
were forced to circle the block before we came in front of the church and
parish house. I knew Jim Watson was going to leave me directions to the
banquet location, so I rapped on the door of the parish house, where Jim
and Tammy are living.
A group of children answered the door, along with
their baby sitter. The Watson's have opened their home to a number of
children whose mothers needed a home for their kids. They crowded around
Delores and me, glad we had made it. They gave us directions, and we were
off, to travel the ten miles to a Christian school where the banquet was
being held, and truly into a different world.
From the "war zone" of the innercity, we traveled to
some of the most beautiful housing in America, and all within fifteen
minutes. Who would know, as you drive into suburban Connecticut, that just
15 minutes away are terrible slums. The commuters from New York arrive
back into these suburbs by train and don't have to see the Bridgeport with
need close by.
Jim and Tammy Watson greeted us and their fears
were lifted as they knew their speaker had arrived for the 2nd Banquet
of the new Bridgeport Mission. There were about one hundred present,
mostly suburbanites, but they had a vital interest in the return
of RESCUE to Bridgeport, one of our early cities, and the home of
Fanny J. Crosby, and Charles Simpson, President of the IUGM. Ernie
Tippetts, our first Executive Secretary, was the director of the
Bridgeport Christian Union.
We returned with Jim and Tammy and took a tour of the
new facilities which will compliment the room house they are using for
men's work, and the facility they are fixing up for a women's shelter.
This will be the hub facility, and will have the meals, chapel service,
and neighborhood programs. That morning over 100 boys and girls attended
their Bible Club program.
As we left Bridgeport, my head was swimming with what
I had been a part of and what God is doing. I thanked God for those in the
Northeast District who had a vision for Bridgeport and raised money, and
called Jim to this ministry, and for Jim and Tammy, but more than that for
Rescue missions everywhere who prepared the people in that banquet hall to
be ready to answer the call, to reach out to Bridgeport and RESCUE the
perishing.
Steve
Burger
AGRM Executive Director
A DRAMATIC RESCUE IN
CONNECTICUT
by Richard Weizel
People shuffled up to the Bridgeport Rescue Mission
van one night with wide-eyed anticipation. It was bitterly cold, but they
were so hungry that the sub-freezing temperatures didn't seem to matter
much.
Some, with tattered jeans and holes in their shoes,
had been here before and said the wait was worth a good, hot meal. Others
said they had gotten work on the street and came for the first time to
find out if there really was somebody willing to brave the windy night to
hand out hot food and blankets.
Those who showed up for the first time said they
weren't disappointed.
Elizabeth Turner, 47, shivered and coughed violently
as she held her stomach. I haven't eaten in four days," she said,
describing sleeping on cold, dirty floors of rat-infested abandoned
buildings. "I can't wait much longer for something to eat. I feel so weak
and tired."
A few minutes later, after devouring two portions of
beef stew, rolls and hot chocolate, Turner, who is homeless, said she felt
much better. "I'm just amazed that somebody is willing to do this," she
said. "Where did this guy come from?"
The mission, which houses the homeless and downtrodden
in a 14-bed shelter and each week feeds hundreds of hungry people in the
most dangerous sections of Connecticut's largest city, was established by
Rev. Jim Watson, who came to Bridgeport in 1993 after being executive
director of the Union Mission of Fairmont, WV.
In contrast to his small operation here, the West
Virginia mission consisted of a 100-bed shelter and soup kitchen that
occupied eight buildings and included a sprawling 111-acre rural camp for
youngsters outside the small, southern city.
But the 41-year -old Baptist minister said he wanted a
greater challenge and prayed to find new work in a city with a large
number of homeless people - a place devastated by gangs, drugs and violent
crimes.
With the support of the non-profit International
Union of Gospel Missions (now Association of Gospel Rescue Missions),
and 10 local churches, Watson got his chance to open Connecticut's
only rescue mission, a place that not only feeds and shelters people
but also offers them counseling and helps them get their lives back
together. He now works in places like Washington Park, the city's
most well-known drug-dealing location, and McLeary Park, another
area frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes.
"I wanted to come to a city that had horrible problems
and a large homeless population with a desperate need for help," said
Watson. "It didn't take me long to realize that I had come to the right
place. There's enough devastation here to keep me busy for a
lifetime."
Watson moved to Bridgeport in May 1993 with his wife
Tammy and their three young children to find the bullet-riddled Harriet
Street building they would eventually rent for the mission being used as a
hangout by gangs, drug dealers and prostitutes.
"It was scary, real scary, when we first got here," he
said. "But we just felt this was where we were meant to be. . .and so we
went to work. And we knew our work was cut out for us because this city
could swallow up 10 missions the size of ours."
Watson recalls having empty beds in some of the
southern shelters. "That's never something that would happen here," he
said. "I have to turn away people every night at our shelter and that does
sadden me."
Watson, who grew up in Baltimore, said that in the
spring he plans to open a soup kitchen that would eventually feed 200
people a day and expand the mission shelter to more than 100 beds. He said
he is energized by helping others.
 "I know it might sound crazy to
some people, but I'm having the time of my life here helping people,"
said Watson, who lives with his family in the city's less dangerous
North End but plans to move shortly to a home near the shelter.
With the financial help of urban and suburban
churches, the Watsons have transformed the Harriet Street building,
located in the city's notorious East End, into a shelter for short- and
long-term use by former drug addicts and longtime criminals. Residents are
permitted to stay in the two-level house for six months to a year if they
are willing to work in the shelter and make an honest effort to get their
lives together, Rev. Watson said.
While in the shelter, long-term residents are required
to either cook, do odd jobs or help out in the van that takes food to the
homeless three times a week and on holidays. The mission has also
purchased a second building on Barnum Avenue that Watson hopes to use
exclusively for women.
Watson said that all the hard work and faith is
starting to pay off.
Ray Nastu, a 37-year-old drug addict arrested more
than 80 times for offenses ranging from possession of drugs to barroom
brawling, was among the first group of mission "graduates." He went back
home to his family in Bridgeport and a carpentry job after living in the
mission for six months.
"I really should have been dead so many times I can't
even keep track anymore and I was pretty much ready to die until I found
this place," said Nastu, who started roaming the streets and shooting
heroin as a teenager. "I never had people care about me the way they did
here and that gave me the hope and courage to believe I could change. I
know it's not going to be easy, but I've been clean for six months and I
like helping people out on the streets now because they remind me a lot of
myself."
On Christmas Day Nastu joined a group of volunteers from the mission
that fed nearly 200 people.
And it resembled Christmas during a recent cold,
January night when men, women and children in torn jeans and dirty
sneakers waited in the parking lot of the city's welfare building for some
hot stew and a warm blanket.
Carlos Dargado, 39, said he's been out of work for
months and was grateful for a hot meal. "Times are pretty rough out there
and what the city gives me in welfare just isn't enough," said Dargado, as
he hurriedly ate a meal of turkey, rice and beans and vegetables. "They
give you good food here."
"One of the sad things about Bridgeport is that a lot
of people have given up on it," said Donald J. Harrington, chairman of the
mission's board of directors. "But here is somebody from out side this
area who has come in and shown people that they shouldn't give up. It's
very inspiring."
-- Reprinted from the Boston Globe by
permission of Richard Weizel.
For more information about AGRM Expansion Program,
contact Gary Meek,
Expansion Director |