When Union Rescue Mission started 135 years ago, horse-drawn wagons scooped up wayward souls around downtown Los Angeles and delivered them to a nearby haven, where they might get a bowl of soup and a dose of prayer.
Today, the mission on San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles fights to bring a measure of relief in the midst of what’s believed to be the biggest encampment of homeless people in North America. It offers food, shelter and myriad programs to try to lift up those who are struggling.
In the midst of such overwhelming need, help has come from an unlikely quarter — an Orange County mega-church. For the last several Sundays, a busload of congregants from Mariners Church have driven to Union Rescue Mission to offer love, prayers (and the occasional hygiene kit) to people used to being ignored.
“In a large church like ours, we’re reminded that we are all created in God’s image,” said Jorge Molina, the Mariners Church pastor who helped bring the O.C. to L.A.’s most troubled neighborhood. “We can’t forget we are here for the whole city, for the whole country,” for everyone.
OC takes over Sunday services in LA
Mariners maintains congregations around Orange County. Collectively, the membership ranks among the largest in California. The church’s first venture into Los Angeles began late this fall, when the Union Rescue Mission’s leaders asked whether their southern neighbors would be interested in running Sunday services.
Molina grew up in El Salvador. He had seen people living in dire circumstances. But the reality of skid row — block after block of cardboard hovels, with people adrift, many fighting inner demons — stunned him. “I did not even realize there were places like this in the U.S.,” he said. “I felt safer in a Third World country than I did here.” But he and Mariners’ senior pastor Eric Geiger also felt certain: “This is where Jesus would come to…