Every summer, college students from all over the U.S. come to Juneau, Alaska for a Cru Summer Project. I’ve worked in Juneau for the paster few summers for the University of Alaska Southeast, where the visiting Cru students live while they’re there, and every year I have loved watching the short-term missionaries not only fall in love with Juneau as a place, but also fall in love with serving Juneau.
One of their outreaches that strikes me the most as a resident of Juneau takes place on the Fourth of July. It’s simple, but let me puzzle the setting together for you.
Tourists; so. many. tourists. I don’t know if they’re here off of cruise ships or doing their own thing, but they’re everywhere. In addition to the tourists are other short-term residents. People from all over the United States (and the world!) come to Juneau to work during this peak tourist season. Downtown Juneau can be pretty sleepy for most of the year, but in the summer all the tourist shops open and there is a huge popuation increase.
Alcohol; so. much. alcohol. Between the bars and the sponsored parties and the house parties, there’s a lot going on. The party atmosphere is alive and well, with sober and not-so-sober people spilling out of doorways to make their way to the docks and the waterfront area to watch the fireworks.
In short, it isn’t so unlike Phuket. There’s very stark, obvious differences, but the desires of the hearts of the people may be more similar than one would think: locals, travellers, and new-experience-seekers looking for a good reason to party. I know how it feels to be in a new city and wanting to feel the excitement it offers. I’ve done it well, and I’ve done it poorly. I can understand the party atmosphere the 4th of July.
The Cru project’s outreach takes place in the midst of this. They stand downtown with big signs with 3 simple words. The words aren’t “TURN OR BURN,” “COME TO JESUS,” or even “JESUS LOVES YOU.”
The signs simply say “I will listen.”
When I first heard about this outreach, I remember asking the Cru students, “Do people actually stop and talk?” And they had many testimonies of people who had talked to them and even asked for prayer. It was my first summer in Juneau, and I couldn’t imagine people, whether local or tourists, just talking to strangers.
Another summer, I was downtown and recognized the Cru students with their signs. And after experiencing the atmosphere firsthand, the outreach suddenly made sense to me:
People travel for many reasons. People drink for many reasons. People look for large drunken social gatherings for many reasons.
Perhaps one of those reasons was loneliness, or emptiness, or confusion. Whatever the reason was, the Cru students were there to listen to them. Not to preach or convince or argue, but to listen and pray. It struck me how simple and how needed their act of listening was that night, and it’s stayed with me since then.
So, fast-forward a few years later, to the month that I’m a missionary in a party city filled with travellers in southern Thailand. We had organized ministry up until the night of the Valentine’s Day, but after that big outreach goal, we had freedom in how we wanted to continue ministry on Bangla Road. The tourists and the men had been on my heart while we’d been in Phuket, and I remembered (or I should say, God reminded me of) the “I will listen” signs. So, with a leap of faith, I pitched the idea to my team.
“I know it sounds weird. But the Cru students actually did have some really cool conversations. People actually stopped. Sure, some people were drunk. And I know that was Juneau and this is Phuket, but I think it could be really cool.”
My team is awesome and supportive-they loved the idea! They jumped on board and we decided on a night to do it. They jumped in faith with me.
On the day of, I was feeling Satan’s attacks. I felt an irrational fear and self-doubt, with thoughts like, “Is this even a good idea for reaching the people on Bangla?” “Is this safe to do this here?”…I even wondered if it was legal to do it (stupid, I know). But with my team’s encouragement, those lies were rebuked and we prepared with confidence. We made the signs, prayed, and headed to Bangla Road.
We’re a team of nine women, so we split up in groups of three and spread out along Bangla. Each team had a sign and made their way to the beginning, middle, or end of the road. My group and I parked ourselves closer to the end of Bangla.
We stood, sign aloft, and waited. I could hardly believe it, but right in front of my eyes, the crowd in front of us opened up-like someone laid an invisible red carpet in front of us.
We got a lot of weird looks. Some, oddly, were scathing, some were curious, and some were just confused, trying to figure out what the phrase in English meant. I could understand the confusion; people holding signs on Bangla were usually selling strip shows, drinks, or some mixture of both.
But some people overcame their hesitation and stepped forward in curiosity with questions: “What is this?” “What are you doing?” “Why are you doing this?”
Our answer usually went somethings like this: “We just feel like there’s so many people here who need someone to just listen to them. There’s a lot of people talking here, but nobody is really listening. We want people to know someone loves them and will listen to them. God has showed us His great love, and we want show others that kind of love by doing this.”
Another question that was asked a lot: “What will you listen to?” usually in a joking manner or with an air of suspicion.
We’d laugh back, “Anything! Whatever you want to tell us. We’re just here for people to feel heard.”
With a smile, thoughtful nod, or a laugh, people opened up to us. We heard about children, divorces, college experiences. We listened to men and women. A Turkish couple was curious, a Spanish group of partiers hung around just to talk to us, an Australian expressed his thanks for what we were doing, a couple of guys from Dubai told us about their studies. Later, an American group of friends waiting for a club to open stopped (the guy I talked to knew what the World Race was, and showed me his friend who will be launching in 2017!) and just hung out with us. We got some snide remarks, some crude things said to us, and were even mocked, but we also got to step into people’s lives, struggles, hurts, and ideas.
Everyone who stopped let us pray for them. Isn’t that incredible?
Non-Christians drew near, opened up, and let us pray for them! All because we listened. We were on the frontlines that night amidst the drugs, alcohol, and prostitution-and we brought Kingdom nearer to so many, not because we had convincing arguements or because we told people to change their lives. But because we extended an invitation. The Light cannot help but attract those in the dark unto itself; I saw the vast difference between drawing inward and pushing outward. People were drawn in by our offer of love- we simply extended what God has already given and invited us to in relationship with Him.
The Kingdom of Heaven was brought near as we loved our neighbor-as we listened to our neighbor.
A Thai man approached me, gesturing at our sign. I stepped forward to talk to him. He asked what we were doing, so I told him. As it turned out, he wasn’t a tourist, but owned a mini-mart on Bangla, down the road from where we standing. He’d seen us, and had been watching us for awhile. He was wearing a necklace with a Buddha on it.
“This is very good here. Nobody do this good here.” he said in his broken English.
“Yes, there’s a lot going on here, but not a lot of good.” I agreed.
“This looks very different.” He said, thoughtful but confident.
“Yes,” I agreed again.
“This…this feels different here tonight.” He moved his arms in a broad circular gesture that encompassed the area around where we were standing. I could feel my smile brighten as he repeated, “Yes, this feels different tonight.”
This time, as he repeated that sentence, he touched his heart.
I almost exploded with excitement and joy. “That’s Jesus!” I said quickly, excitedly. That difference you feel here,” I gestured to my heart, “that’s because Jesus is here. He’s living in me; he feels and looks different than the rest of Bangla!”
He looked surprised at my words, but nodded in agreement, as if to say, “Huh, I guess that’s it.” He had to go back to his shop, so I prayed for him and let him go on with his night.
I told the other girls in my group about the interaction, still stoked by what he’d said. This man works on Bangla every night, he sees Bangla every night. But tonight, it had felt different to him. There was a difference that he not only saw in our actions, but felt in his heart. And he’d let me pray to the difference-maker, Jesus, for him and his shop.
We held the signs until past midnight. Over the course of four hours we prayed for countless people and we recounted the stories with amazement. One group had talked with an Italian chiropractor and his friend, and I watched as he gave my teammates a free chiropractic adjustment on Bangla (was I a little afraid for their lives? Yes…). Another Italian couple, hanging outside a nearby bar, noticed and came over out of curiousity. When they realized they were all from Italy, there was an uproar of laughter and instant comradeship.
I wondered if getting people to look up from whatever reasons had them on Bangla was as easy as creating community. I could launch into a Levinas-inspired meditation, but I’ll wrap it up by saying I saw the difference it made for the men to see, really see, one another and respond to each other in comradeship.
Maybe they even started to listen to each other.
This night was one of my favorites on the Race. God used a simple sign and a simple heart attitude to impact so many-the tourists and locals, the girls working the bars and the men buying them. After only one night, I can only imagine what inspiring connection, responsivity, and an attitude of listening could do for the people on Bangla.
Just today, our host in Phuket sent us a picture that made my heart so, so happy and full: the World Race team that came this month was standing on Bangla, holding our “I will listen” signs.
Maybe that’s how change happens. This simple idea has already created waves larger than I would’ve ever thought: from the Cru Summer Project’s outreach in Juneau, AK to Bangla Road in Phuket, Thailand with not one, but now two World Race teams.
We got to pray with so many strangers, hear incredible stories and hurts, and a teammate of mine even lead a young student to the Lord that night.
It makes me wonder: what would happen if I’d offered to listen in Palmer, in Juneau, in Germany? What would happen if we listened more and stepped into strangers’ stories for a night?
This night changed how I saw my neighbors on Bangla and the strangers I saw every day. We listened to stories I could never have made up, and after listening, we were able to enter into struggles and share our own story: a love story of how God once listened and loved us. Everyone has neighbors. Everyone has a story, and we have a choice: will we listen?
