This Sunday we were blessed by a Married Life Connect group from HPC. They provided food at a Cooking for Christ meeting (very cool for the cooks to be cooked for). All the extra food was boxed up to do a “spur of the moment” homeless outreach.
We headed downtown and stopped under the overpass where Annie lives. We’re seeing more and more people, they have their own neighborhood going on there. It’s a diverse group of people, some have mental conditions that may be the reason they’re on the streets, some have drug/alcohol problems, some look like they just fell on hard times and are trying to climb their way out of the situation they’re in. There’s this one young girl, around 18, spending time around her, you can tell she’s not new to the street. What’s she doing out there??? .
We stopped to see Sandra. She’s been out here longer than I’ve been helping with the outreach. She’s had chances to get off the street, but always returns. She’s a loner. I worry about her safety and how she’ll keep warm when it’s cold out. We’ve already given her two coats and a couple of blankets this year. They get stolen, lost or dirty. When we visited her Sunday she had soiled herself, the evidence was on her and the sidewalk where she sits. She didn’t even seem to notice. How do you reach someone who would rather be on the street alone than in a shelter where she could be clean and warm?
At the levee, we ran into Phil and Marlene. She was so excited to tell us about her weekend. Saturday they were sitting around drinking and this guy showed up and offered them two tickets to the LSU game in exchange for a beer.
Her next words took a while to sink in, but when they did, wow. She told us the porta potties there were soooo nice they spent the night in them. It sounded like she was describing a night at the Marriott. Imagine her world, most of us would just about explode before using the porta potty and she thinks it’s a great place to spend the night. When they woke up the next morning, they were thirsty and their beer was gone so they checked out the DPW (took a minute to get that one, she was talking about the trash cans). She was ecstatic, they found a new book sack for Phil and a gallon of something to drink. They were still working on the gallon when we arrived.
Sometimes you have to look for the humor, because it’s so heartbreaking. A short time ago, she was sober, she almost died from drinking. After getting out of the hospital she said she was scared and was trying hard to stay sober. Phil was in jail at the time, so he was sober too. About a month later, he got out of jail and went right back to drinking. She only stayed sober a week or two more.
From there we headed to the house where J.D. & Billy are staying. We asked J.D. how Janet was doing he told us she was staying with her family and started going to AA (Praise God!). Janet was raped in an attack where she and three other homeless guys were severely beaten. J.D. is eaten up with rage/guilt (he was in jail and wasn’t there to protect her). She told him to go on with his life without her. Maybe, just maybe, through this awful event their lives can change and they’ll find the love of Jesus.
In the last several weeks, we’ve been stopping at a place where we’ve been unsure of the situation. There are women there that have been beaten and/or been in fights. They have at times appeared to be drunk or drugged. It looks like they are being prostituted. We aren’t sure if they are there of their own free will or not. One of the ladies has come to the breakfast at Roselawn and said she wants to go to the Café at the Dream Center, but we saw her being dropped off back there Sunday.
I know this is overload for a lot of people, and hard to grasp. It was and is sometimes for me too. What kind of world do we live in when there is so much hopelessness, lack of empathy, despair and evil?
For me, it’s a world where Jesus has called me to do the best I can to show his love to the lost, forgotten and hurting. If we only reach one after all our efforts, it will be worth it. It’s something that HPC really teaches, “it’s all for the one”.
Please pray for the people out there. Above all else, that’s something they can never have too much of.
J
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