My Friend, Mona (Part 2)
When I first met Mona and her children, she was desperate. The police here in Los Angeles had been ordered to round up homeless people like Mona and her children, and take them to Tent City. The police had no choice, and homeless people had no choice.
“Mrs. Jordan,” Mona said, “you used to pick us all up in big buses, and take us to Fred Jordan mission every day. Tent City was so dirty, and the Mission was so clean. I remember that you gave us food, clothing—but most of all, you gave us love. And that’s what has carried us through the tough times. I just wanted to say thank you.”
Mona went on to tell me a story that I’m sure I’ve heard a thousand times or more – she married the “love of her life,” and they had children. But his “social drinking” turned out to be chronic, he hit the bottle too hard, and then he lost his job. Soon they lost their home, and he took off, leaving Mona and their children homeless – no husband, father, home, and nothing in the bank, so she ended up on Skid Row, where she could at least find a meal at a place like Fred Jordan Mission.
But when Mona and her children were forced to live in Tent City, she said she felt like she had ended up in hell. families, single women, and single men lived in makeshift tents, under tarps out in the middle of a huge dirt field, surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, alongside the railroad tracks, east of town, down by the river.
One morning when our charter buses arrived to pick up the mothers and children, police were swarming the area, looking for a child molester who had sexually abused Mona’s young son, Chris, and several other young boys. But the attacks on the boys should not have been a surprise to anyone, since homeless men, women and children were forced to go to Tent City, or go to jail - - drunks, drug addicts, hardened ex-convicts, child molesters, and sexual predators of all kinds had been thrown together into this chain-linked encampment, along with mothers, children, and other homeless people whose only “crime” was being poor.
It was a terrible environment, and that’s why we went there every morning. Mona went on to say, “When your big busses would come to Tent City day after day, we felt you’d come to rescue us. You saved our lives…and we’ve never forgotten it.”
And friend, I pray that you will never forget all the mothers like Mona, and her precious children who desperately need to know that God loves them, and so do we.
Please help us continue to bless families like Mona’s. When you give to Fred Jordan Mission, you give the precious gift of HOPE. 1-844-FJM-FOOD is our toll-free line. Use a major credit card when you phone, or when you donate online, fjm.org.
Blessings,
Willie Jordan (Mrs. Fred Jordan)