Disclaimer: This blog is long and I know half of you are going to want to quit pretty soon after this first paragraph. Please, don't miss out on what God did in our lives this weekend by doing just that.
I can't remember exactly how this came about but all I know is that I was supposed to be in Austin, TX for a missionary leadership meeting at Austin Ridge Bible Church. I asked my friend Aaron Coffey to come along with me on the ride, mostly so that I wouldn't be bored, we could do a little longboarding and skating around downtown Austin and just escape the metroplex of Eustace, TX we like to call home. The idea came about to minister to the homeless people of Austin on night of the weekend, then the idea changed to minister and sleep with them for a night then the idea came to invite Chase Taylor another best friend of ours, then the idea changed to spend the entire weekend ministering and sleeping with the homeless people of Austin, TX so that is what we did and this is our story, from my perspective.
We arrived in Austin about 10:30pm on Friday night and as we were walking down the streets with our backpacks and sleeping bags we noticed that no one was on the streets, most of the homeless had left the streets. I knew a local hang out by a church that a couple of them used to sit and talk so I took us there first. We were greeted by Terrible Terry, Popsicle and Linc. We fit right in. They didn't really ask many questions about us, but just went ahead and assumed that we were bums too. We just went ahead and went with it and kind of just listened as they explained to us all of the hobo slang. We learned about the "Home bums", the "Home Guards" and the "Hobos" or "Travelers." We learned that "6 up" meant that the cops were coming and you need to stand up to avoid getting a ticket. They told us everything about this underground community that they called home. As the night went on Popsicle and Linc went to sleep and it just left us there with Terry, who was completely drunk and loved to talk. We kept ourselves in the dark about what we were doing this weekend. We ask a question about religion and he seemed to have all of the answers. He knew exactly what to say to that question. It pretty much blew my mind how much he had to say and when he was done, I stayed silent. He mentioned that getting drunk wasn't a sin and I felt a gentle push by the Holy Spirit to speak truth to that lie, but again I stayed silent. We asked him, "What is a good place to sleep tonight?" He said, "Well I know a couple places, actually I will take you to one of them." Terry was nice enough to show us a good spot where we would be safe and the cops wouldn't mess with us.
Welcome to our humble abode. This was our sleeping arrangement for Friday night. This is the stairwell of a church that Terry showed us. As we were laying down getting ready to go to sleep Terry comes back. He said, "Man I have to sleep with yall tonight I couldn't get to my spot." I didn't respond, I was already ready for bed. Chase and Aaron were like sweet man come join us! As I was going in and out of sleep I hear Chase get up and walk over to Terry. He said, "man Terry can I pray for you?" Terry was happy to have Chase pray for him, when Chase finished his prayer Terry was so excited and said that he wanted to hang out with us all of the next day. Come to find out Chase had felt like he should pray with Terry earlier in the night and felt that God had brought Terry along again so that he could be faithful to what the Spirit was telling him and pray for Terry. Powerful stuff. As morning came, I woke up at 6:00am which was probably the 50th time I woke up that night. Concrete is very comfortable, everyone sell your temper-pedics.
We woke up and walked across the street, hoping to volunteer at a church that was serving breakfast that morning to the homeless people. Soon after getting there we were told that they didn't need any help, they had it covered. On the inside I was a little crush and our plan to serve that morning was halted.
So we got in the car and drove to the next homeless shelter. We found the Salvation Army, apparently you have to sign up and be approved to volunteer there which was also the case of the other two homeless shelters that we found.
As we were walking into the homeless shelter a man yells at us and says, "Be careful, you are walking into the Devil's house." When I heard that a sense of fear came over me, I was honestly scared of what I was about to encounter, as I turned the corner it was just an alley with people talking and I didn't see anything that gave me the sense that it was the "Devil's house." As we came back out of the alley way, I felt like we should go talk to the man yelling at us to beware.
We started up some conversation and again the homeless man had all the right things to say. He knew it all, he loved Jesus and trusted him as his savior and then he said, but I do smoke some marijuana on the side. "It's not bad, its a natural thing from the earth"… again, I stayed silent.
After talking to the homeless man, Chase said "Hey I have some clothes in my truck, lets give them away to these homeless guys." So we went and grabbed a few guys, who invited more guys, who attracted more guys and before we knew it about 10 guys were standing around our truck going through Chase's clothes that he had brought to donate. It was very rewarding to be able to help these guys, most of them just grabbed some stuff and scampered off, but a few remained. We were able to talk to Bill (on the left) and Douglas (on the right) and share with them a little of what we were doing and why. To be able to bless these guys and hang out with them was a blessing for me.
We were also able to buy a couple guys some cokes throughout the day and just get to talk to them about a little bit of everything.
God really laid it on my heart that we needed to share our experiences with them in order to minister to them. It was great to be able to talk to them about their religion and beliefs, but if we can share our experiences we have had with God that is going to speak truth into their lives. So that is what we set out to do.
Let me introduce you to David. David is awesome….
Part 2 coming.
It gets super legit.
