THE ENTRYWAY TO HEALING AND WHOLENESS The Founder of Livermore's Shepherd's Gate Tells Her Story
	OCTOBER 2005

by Alice Ann Cantelow

I came down with a bad case of mid-life crisis when I was 50 years old. This was during the 1970s and the entire society seemed to be going through some kind of crisis — or a correction, as the members of the counter-cultural movement would have us believe.

I was far too old to become a flower child, but nevertheless enlisted in the revolution with all my heart. I became pretty wild; I left my husband of 24 years, turned on, dropped out, and did such things as spending periods of bliss with my eyes closed and my head full of some song like Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence.”

I had zero income during those days while working as an unpaid volunteer in an alternative school for troubled youngsters that met in a Catholic Church. I was caretaker of a city property and my pay was that the owners let me sleep out of the weather. My services weren’t valuable enough to warrant a bed, so I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag and prepared my meals on a little camp stove.

I augmented the little bit of food that came to me by going into fast food restaurants, ordering a hamburger, and then cleaning up the fries, drinks, and sandwiches that other people left behind. In the winter I learned to stay warm by spending a few hours reading at the local library. I stopped using my hormone replacement medicine so I could use my hot flashes as allies against the cold.

I realize that it sounds like I was leading a ghastly life, but I considered my lack of resources to be no big deal. I’m a camper! I was just camping out all the time. No problem.

I eventually got a job as a Park Ranger for East Bay Regional Park District. My job was taking children on nature walks, and giving lessons about such topics as Native Americans and pioneer history. I taught kids how to make candles and how to grind up acorns for food. That was great!

Brought to Faith and Service
Jesus got my attention while I was working for the Park Service. The light came to me through a Bible study lead by my boss’s wife at the park where I was working. I opened my life to let Jesus come in and take control. Just as a harbor pilot will assume control of a ship, Jesus began guiding my life.

The Bible became the source of a consuming passion and in a year and a half I had taken notes on every chapter of every book from Genesis to Revelation. The need to make restitution became a compelling drive and I sought forgiveness from my ex-husband, my three daughters, and anyone else I could think of that I had harmed during the course of my wayward life.

My Shepherd’s Gate dream began to come to me through a series of little interventions I was making in the lives of forsaken people. I had already been taking these people into my home by ones and twos. I began to envision a place where numbers of battered and forsaken women and children could come and find a place of shelter from the storm.

I had been planning to take an extended hike down the 1,500 mile length of the Pacific Coast Trail when God told me as clearly as if He had spoken in an audible voice that I was going to cancel my plans and begin taking care of homeless women and children. I didn’t want to do this, but God kept hounding me. I complained that I didn’t know anything about taking care of homeless people, but He reminded me that He had taken care of me when I was homeless myself. “It’s time to get out of the sandbox,” He said.

Before we opened Shepherd’s Gate I spent some time studying and learning a lot of lessons from the wonderful professionals at the Richmond Rescue Mission and at the Evangel Home in Fresno, California. After a series of meetings with an ad hoc steering committee, we organized a Board of Managers and got down to work on planning and fund-raising. God marvelously brought people together to manage the legal and business oversight of the work.

I sold my house and, through a marvelous series of coincidences (But who believes in coincidences?) I was able to take possession of the original Shepherd’s Gate property. In fact, my 1,100-square-foot mobile home sold for almost the same price as the 2,700 square foot Livermore facility.

Raising funds for the facility was a big challenge, but I felt that the hand of God was beneath and supporting our efforts. We always considered that Shepherd’s Gate was His refuge for women and children. We were only the instruments He was using to accomplish His purposes.

Our needs were always met sometimes in miraculous ways. For example, our washing machine broke down one day. We didn’t know what we were going to do when a new washing machine showed up at our front door. It turned out that the manager of Safeway had bought one for the employees and had “accidentally” ordered two of them. Our old coffeemaker broke down on the exact day that a coffeemaker showed up in a pile of donations. These kinds of “coincidences” were common occurrences and we always took them as signs of the presence of God with us.

The red tape and regulations of the Planning Commission and the City Council faded away in such a dramatic fashion that our realtor made the comment, “I’m beginning to believe in this God of yours.”

God’s Hand Extended
Shepherd’s Gate has been meeting the needs of homeless women and children since July 1984 — and doing so without receiving a single complaint from area residents and neighbors. For the past five years it has been in a new facility that looks more like a Mediterranean-style resort than it does like a place for homeless people. We offer a three-week transition time to give women a space for recovery.

A stream of needy women has been flowing through our doors. Many had been abused as children and were being abused as adults. Some were suffering from addictions, sexual immorality, and depressions so great they could hardly function. Others were trying to cope with rage. One of the women had used a knife to kill men in a barroom brawl on two separate occasions.

Women with chemical dependencies began to enter our intensive nine months program. Their beautiful natures began to surface in endearing ways. We learned right away that the most crucial thing we could give the women and children was not shelter, food, or clothing but God’s special love that sees only the beautiful person He created. Everyone’s real self, made in the image of God, is in there somewhere. All we have to do is brush the dust off.

The Shepherd’s Gate provides an environment that makes the precious women feel like valuable people. We cherish them and embrace them in love. We pray for them and pray with them. We have classes on living skills including finance classes and job-skills training. We sponsor regular 12-step meetings and conduct Bible Studies.

Many of the women who enter Shepherd’s Gate are in desperate need of love and structure in their lives. We give them lots of love and begin to see wonderful changes take place almost immediately when, at their first meeting, their new “sisters” gather around them to wash their feet.

We really are into tough-love, however. The women all understand that failure to conform their behavior to the Shepherd’s Gate rules means expulsion from the program. It helps them to know that we are serious about change and will only work with people who are serious about changing themselves. Fortunately, the majority of our residents are serious about this and most of them successfully make the necessary changes.

Each of our women is given a chore to do as an assignment, which they have to complete every day before they are permitted do anything else. Some of the women never learned to clean a bathroom or wash a sink full of dishes in their lives. As the other women patiently work with them to show them how to straighten up a towel rack or how to clean a toilet, the women begin to learn how to take care of themselves and even how to serve other people.

Days of Miracles and Wonder
We serve our guests with three meals a day, but they have to show up on time or (unless they have a very good reason) they go hungry. Clear discipline says, “I care for you!” as much as our hugs and foot washings do. The acts of love and loving discipline create a happy, often merry, environment for Shepherd’s Gate. Visitors often remark about what a happy place we have.

In fact, one desperately needy guest actually broke down weeping while listening to a staff member read the Shepherd’s Gate rules to her. She made the connection between God’s love for her and the regulations we had created. The woman’s life was never the same after that experience. Another came to us with razor blades taped to her stomach so she could kill herself at any time. She left the home later with peace in her heart and no razor blades on her stomach.

We witnessed wonderful cases of healing. One woman scheduled for a cancer operation was absolutely delivered of her tumors. When she went for the operation the next morning no trace of the cancer could be found. We prayed for another woman whose water broke in the seventh month of pregnancy and she miraculously carried her child full term. The Bible says that the “son of righteousness has risen with healing in his wings,” and he surely spread those wings over our guests on a number of wonderful occasions.

I haven’t words to describe the miracles God performed in sending us an unending supply of staff members and volunteers. Thoreau once gave the advice, “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” Thoreau’s advice didn’t have anything to do with it, but the Spirit of God kept our channel full of brilliant people who love the work we’re doing.

I lived and worked in Shepherd’s Gate until I was 70, at which time God showed me that the program had outgrown my ability to manage. Other women and men had stepped up to carry the program on in my absence.

Now the beautiful Brentwood Shepherd’s Gate facility has become a reality through a series of experiences that were more breathtaking than those associated with the initial property.

Brentwood is just the first step in a planet-wide movement. Our managers, Steve & Carla McRee, have a global vision for helping women. They are exploring their next step, which is to build a Shepherd’s Gate in Costa Rica.

I am continually humbled and delighted to have been part of something as wonderful as Shepherd’s Gate. “Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous,” the Psalmist wrote. “The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things! The Lord’s right hand is lifted high…; The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

I know just how he felt!