When Pat Nixon was a 15 year old, he used to sit outside Calgary's City Hall and bum money from passers-by. Now, as executive director of the Mustard Seed Street Ministry, Nixon still 'bums' money - but on a much larger scale.

"God was preparing me for his service in his kingdom," says the one-time juvenile delinquent, who currently oversees an annual budget of $5.7 million.

Over the past 22 years, the former street kid with a seventh-grade education has mobilized thousands of volunteers from local churches and businesses to help street people get back on their feet.

Though the Mustard Seed serves more than 1,200 meals each day, Nixon's vision was never just to "hand someone a sandwich."

Each night the ministry provides 82 mats for the homeless as well as transitional housing for people committed to getting off the street. The job initiative program in their Creative Centre provides grade 12 accreditation as well as a variety of job training and computer skills. Now hundreds of street folk, who would otherwise never have had a chance, have viable employment.

But Nixon's vision doesn't end there. Two years ago, the Order of Canada recipient wanted to build "a place where we can pull people out of the inner city and give them a new environment, a new chance," he says.

In the spring of 2006, Nixon's dream became reality as The Seed bought Mountain Aire Lodge, two hours northwest of Calgary. Now 10 street people are part of the lodge staff -- cooking meals, waiting tables, cleaning motel rooms and pumping gas.

"For some people, all they need is two or three months up here to get themselves turned around," says Nixon in a recent Calgary Herald article.

Working 12 to 14 hours a day during peak season, staff members earn between $1,200 and $1,600 each month. Half of their wages they pocket and the other half is placed into a trust fund they receive when they leave the program.

Nixon says combining meaningful labour with counselling and spiritual guidance gives these former homeless people their best shot at success.

When he was a law-breaking teen, Nixon says he could have never fathomed his future as a leader in the community, a public speaker, a husband and father of six sons, and award recipient.

As a young boy growing up in Vancouver, Nixon was beaten repeatedly by his father. By the time he was 12, drinking and drugs became his escape. As he was starting grade 8, Nixon was kicked out of school for assault. His life on the street had begun.

Initially dealers used Nixon as a "drug wheel" throughout the interior of British Columbia.

"I would pick up drugs, get on a Greyhound bus, look cute, drop off the drugs and pick up the money," he explains. "They called me 'The Kid' and made me feel like a top-end criminal."

Yet by the time he was 15, Nixon was a drug addict and discarded by the dealers. He hit bottom and found himself thinking about suicide. But the image of a Sunday school plaque he had made, The Lord is my Shepherd, leapt into his thoughts. Nixon recalled clenching his fist at the sky and yelling, "What kind of a Shepherd are you? If you are my Shepherd come down here and prove it."

Nixon says he eventually realized many of the events that led him off the street were a direct result of this "prayer."

Soon afterward, RCMP officers found an intoxicated Nixon passed out, once again, on a park bench in Kamloops. Fed up with constantly holding the teen in their drunk tank, the officers deposited him, semi-conscious, on a bus bound for Calgary.

Lonely, stinking and constantly sick from drinking cheap wine and Lysol, Nixon was begging for cash in the downtown core when four young men came by and offered him a meal. The men, from Calgary's First Baptist Church, subsequently took him to their house and gave him food, clothing and his own room.

Although Nixon wanted to change, he quickly fell back into his old drug habits. He even began stealing from the guys who had taken him in. At age 16 he was arrested for breaking and entering and auto theft and sent to a federal penitentiary.

Released at age 18, Nixon went right back to his Christian friends asking for a second chance. Amazingly, they agreed.

"I was given lots of chances," Nixon says. "Because of that I'm willing to take a second, third, fourth and fifth chance on people . . . That's part of what compassion is."

While in jail, Nixon had been writing to a beautiful, intelligent girl he had met at a wedding. Already a Christian, Lise's encouragement helped lead Nixon to faith once he was released. Pat and Lise married soon after and Nixon credits her with much of his success.

Nixon progressed from washing dishes at Calgary's Burning Bush coffeehouse to running the establishment.

The first time he haltingly gave his testimony, complete with an awkward altar call, he became "terrified as the whole front of the stage was filled with people on their knees to accept Christ."

In November 1984, Calgary's Mustard Seed was born in a three-storey house near First Baptist.

By 1992, the homeless population was on the rise and The Seed desperately needed new digs. A 27,000-square-foot, four-storey, vintage office building became available in the shadows of the Calgary Tower.

The day before they were to sign the final papers for the loan, a private donor wrote a cheque for the entire amount of $375,000.

"It was very, very amazing," Nixon says. It was as if a light went on in the city. Churches began to volunteer their time, energy and resources to help the poor.

When the Mustard Seed started, Nixon was the only paid staff member. Now there are 80 full-time and 70 part-time employees and over 11,000 volunteers.

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" by caring "for the whole person, the way Christ cared for us."

Nixon hopes to increase the Mountain Aire Lodge staff to 30 in the next couple of years and then scout around for another potential site outside of the city where he can bring more wounded street people into a fresh community with a healing environment.

It appears no dream is too big for the man who took the smallest of all seeds, the Mustard Seed, and helped it flourish into one of the largest street ministries in Canada.

Mission Fields Spring 2007