Downtown 9/19/2011--The Benefit of Listening to God

Last night's trip was one of those trips mixed with frustration and moments of joy. The first half of the trip seemingly was unfruitful. I was down in the area of my recent focus, but not quite on the couple of streets that are definitely the ones I'm 'supposed' to be on. I gave out half the food to homeless people who were in need, but something just seemed to be missing. One of the men was named Jeremiah. He was all alone and had almost no possessions. His shoes were off exposing some unbelieveably dirty feet. What an opportunity for a foot washing ministry! When he stood up his pants kept falling down because he had no belt to hold them up. Of course, they were several sizes too large. I had a pair of pants closer to his size in the trunk that I gave him. I also couldn't miss the opportunity to tell him about "his" verse in the bible. Yeah, that one, Jeremiah 29:11. Another person I helped in the first part of the night was a woman named Betty. I had pulled over a ways away from two men on a corner because there was no place to park near them. There was also some police activity nearby and I didn't want to be parking illegally. One of the two men on the corner was in a wheelchair. I had seen them and driven around the block to get back to them, but by the time I found a place to park they were crossing the street and I wasn't going to be able to track them down from where I had parked. While stopped there, a woman came up to the car and started to ask for some help. Her name was Betty. I'm not sure why she stopped in mid-sentence so I asked her if she needed some food. After giving her help with the food and water, she asked me for 50 cents. Now I have been told not to give out money to anyone, but is 50 cents really money? I gave her the change off the floor of my car, it was slightly more than that. Another man named Jeff was digging through a trash can on 7th and Los Angeles St. I was able to help him too, along with about three other homeless folks on other streets who were just walking around. However, something just wasn't right up to this point and I knew it. Deep down I knew what it was too.

One of the objectives of this trip had been to find the street and stairwell where I saw Jose and Rhonda a couple of weeks ago, but after driving around for awhile looking I never found them. During all this driving around I had gotten sidetracked from the initial objecive of these recent trips which was to just go down to the street where the homeless were sleeping in the doorways off 8th St. So after a short break I drove over to Wall St and 8th and got out of the car with the bag of remaining hamburgers. The first guy I walked up to was a man named Arthur from Alabama. We talked for a bit and he was thrilled to get some food. While talking to him, another man walked up. He had been standing with a couple of other men and asked if I had some food because they were hungry and homeless. His name was Jose. Well, I hadn't really finished with Arthur yet so I told Jose to wait just a moment so I could pray with Arthur first. Then I walked with Jose back to his other two friends. Wouldn't you know it, but another woman walked up to us while I was with them. She got in on the group prayer session too. I had to walk back to the car to get the cold water for everyone, including Arthur, but everyone was really appreciative. It made me wonder what I missed out on by not just going to this street to start with. I had been putting it off for over an hour and had seen very little results (ie. real conversations with people and prayer time). I finally listened to what God had been telling me to do and the trip changed immediately. If only I had listened and obeyed sooner. It reminded me of Jesus' words to the Pharisees, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me..." (John 10:27). Until next week. John