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BY LINDA WORTHINGTON
UMCONNECTION STAFF

TAMPA - When the Rev. Lorenza Andrade-Smith tried to enter the Tampa Convention Center for General Conference she was asked to leave because she had no shoes. As she explained to a packed audience meeting in the Common Witness Tabernacle across the street from the Convention Center April 27, “I walk with no shoes because …it is a way that I can be an advocate for the very poor who have no shoes, and a way that I am in community with them.”

Andrade-Smith has sold her house, her car and most of her possessions, taken a vow of poverty, and dedicated herself to learn to live on the streets for two years in order to understand the plight of the homeless and needy. She has been appointed by her bishop (Southwest Texas) to the ministry of living on the streets and has nearly completed her first year.

She arrived at General Conference with a small backpack and a bedroll and took up residence outside on the ground near the tent-tabernacle. She arrived with a warrant for her arrest because of sleeping on a park bench. “That type of criminalization of people of poverty needs to come to an end,” she said.  “It is a global issue,” not only Hispanic/Latina (as in the U.S.) but in Korea, Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well.

 “Poverty is a symptom of even larger issues going on around our world,” she said.  It is an immigration issue, which should be treated as a humanitarian issue, not a political one. “There are organizations making billions of dollars from the misery of immigration.” The next day there was a large rally tying the privatization of prisons to the frequent incarceration of immigrants.

Andrade-Smith has been arrested several times, been in detention and served some time in jail, primarily based on her sleeping on park benches or similar infractions of law.  In court one time, the judge gave her a community service penalty, and sent her to the homeless shelter that wouldn’t let her stay because she carried a metal chalice.

She carries a chalice and a paten with her wherever she goes. For her, the chalice is a tangible way that she brings Christ with her into the community of the poor.  When people ask her about her chalice she tells them about the presence of Christ. One man crossing the border between Mexico and the U.S. said, “Now I know I am no longer alone.”

Criminalization of immigration is a major concern of hers. She was asked about the Supreme Court’s current consideration of the Arizona law (SB1050) that criminalizes immigration. “This legislation affects children of God all across the globe,” she said.  “I don’t know how that’s going to turn out but if it goes forward, the U.S. will be recognized (negatively) around the globe.”

She tirelessly campaigns on behalf of the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) that allows immigrants who entered the U.S. as children to apply for conditional legal status after attending college or serving in the military for two years. “The DREAM Act will change us tremendously in this country,” she said, as it allows young people who would otherwise not qualify for work permits because of their immigration status to work legally. “Pray and fast for the DREAM movement.”

When asked what the hardest thing for her is regarding her vow of poverty, she replied,  “The hardest thing is survival on the streets. I work on advocacy. I go to churches and build community. The church has been good to me. People on the streets have been a loving, hospitable community who care for me.  Here in Tampa a man stopped me and said it was going to be cool outside at night and he gave me his blanket.”

We must be forward thinking and prophetically stand in the pulpits in our local churches, and in our schools, she urged.