by Doris Fleck
On September 9, one of Calgary’s former street kids received the
country’s highest honor, the Order of Canada.
Over the past 20 years, Pat
Nixon, the Executive Director of the Mustard Seed Street Ministry, has
mobilized thousands of volunteers from local churches and businesses to
provide their time, talent or cash to help street people get back on
their feet.
"Pat’s extremely deserving,"
said Rick Tobias, executive director of Toronto’s Younge Street Mission.
"Across the nation there’s hardly a street ministry that hasn’t
benefitted from Pat’s learning."
Nixon is a dreamer who believes
in miracles and as far as he’s concerned, he’s just getting started
solving "some big problems for the street folks in our community." His
method is to "care for the whole person, the way Christ cared for us."
And his means is to mobilize the Church to do it.
Nixon said that when he was a
law-breaking teen, he could have never fathomed his future as a husband
and father of six sons, a leader in the community, a public speaker and
award recipient. "I had no concept of what I could be," he remarked.
"Other people had it for me."
As a 15-year-old street kid
Nixon found himself lonely, stinking and constantly sick from drinking
cheap wine and Lysol. He was begging for cash in the downtown core when
four young men came by and offered to buy him a meal. These men, from
Calgary’s First Baptist Church, took him to their house and gave him
food, clothing and his own room.
"These guys are still the
people I look at as the heroes of my life," Nixon said. "For me, there
were the right people there at the right time. I believe this can happen
for every one of these street folks."
When the Mustard Seed started,
Nixon was the only paid staff member. Now with 65 full-time and 35
part-time employees and close to 10,000 volunteers, an average of 1,268
meals are provided each day. But Nixon’s vision was never just to "hand
someone a sandwich."
|
Pat Nixon |
Since 1999, the
development of the Creative Centre has provided viable
employment for hundreds of street folk who would otherwise never
have had a chance.
People can complete
their Grade 12 credits, take college level classes, learn a
trade or deal with emotional issues.
But Nixon’s dreams
don’t stop there.
"I want to build a
town," Nixon said, "a place where we can pull people out of the
inner city and give them a new environment where we can
literally work with hundreds if not thousands of people at
once."
Currently researching the possibilities
Nixon explains, "So many of our folks, if given a new
environment, a new chance, just like I was given…I believe
they’ll make it." |
