After a night of joyful and uplifting worship interspersed with prayer and revelations from God, I find myself walking down the dark streets of Penang, Malaysia with a fellow squad mate, Kristy Paruk. We’re just a couple blocks away from the place that we are staying, but all the sudden I realize that Kristy isn’t walking right beside me anymore. I turn to stop with her, seeing that she is knelt beside a homeless man that I just ignored.
This man knew very little English, so it was difficult to understand him and to know what to say, but it was incredible to watch as Kristy had such a spirit of community with this man. Although neither one of us could really tell what this man was saying, you would not have been able to figure that out from the way Kristy was engaging with this man. Full of smiles, gestures and nods, it seemed like this was a long-time friend of hers. She displayed such genuine interest, care, concern and compassion for this man.
After a few minutes sitting with this man, we finally excused ourselves and made our way back home for the night. But that is not the end of the story!
Later that night, around midnight, Kristy came knocking on the guys room. She said that as she sat down to blog that night, words just were not coming to her, so she decided to pray. As she prayed, the verse, I was naked and you clothed me, kept coming to mind. She approached us guys to ask us if we had any pants or clothes we could spare to give this man from the street. She said that she noticed how this man only had 2 shirts: one he was wearing, and the other he used to cover his waist.
Kristy wanted to love this man, to honor this man, and to give him the dignity that he deserves as a human being and as an image-bearer of God, by providing for this mans need to cover over his nakedness.
We guys got some clothes together (for some of us it was easier to part with our $70 quick -dry, rip-stop, zip-off, hiking pants than it would have been to just give him our $5 Thai pants we bought the month before, for one just because it was obvious that they were more valuable and would hold up better and that he needed them more–that they would best serve him living out on the streets, whereas we would manage without them).
So at about midnight, Kristy, Scott Kwak and I went back out to find this man and give him our clothes. But when we got to where he was sleeping just an hour and a half earlier, he was no longer there. I searched for him, but couldn’t find him in any of the nearby streets or alleyways. I would have searched all night for this man if I could have, but by about 1am we decided to head back home.
The next night Kristy and I would walking past that same spot on the way back from doing prayer and community outreach ministry to the women in the red light district (see blog Cheap Date for only $5) when we saw this same man again sleeping in the same spot. We quickly went back home to get the bag of clothes we had collected for him, and made our way back to the street corner, all the while praying that he would still be there when we arrived. Sure enough he was!
We gently woke him up to give him the bag of clothes. At first he was afraid because he thought we were there to harass him or that perhaps we were police there to arrest him (it is illegal to be homeless living on the streets in Malaysia). But when he saw that we were there to give him clothes, he was instantly very grateful.
We sat with him for quite a while, and I got to pray for him in Jesus name and bless him in Jesus name. There was a man just around the corner, who wasn’t there the day before and who that was listening in as we were talking. I’ve talked to several homeless people back home, and Ive been able to speak about Jesus to many people in my lifetime, but this man was a Muslim, and here in this country it is illegal to evangelize to Muslims. Yet I got to pray for him and bless him in Jesus name, and clothe him as if he were Jesus!
One week later I was again walking with Kristy back home again, when she called me to come follow here down another street we had just past. There sitting against a building was another homeless man (a different one than the first) that Kristy had been wanting to talk to ever since our first week in Malaysia (this was now one of our last days here).
This man had been fairly rambunctious in the street throughout the month, at one time waving a knife around near an open-air restaurant just a half a block away from where we lived. But this time he wasn’t is the same dark alley he normally was but was in a well-lit street not too far away.
Kristy and I sat with this man and talked with him for a while. He was very difficult to understand at first, but as the conversation went on it seems to get easier and easier to know what he was saying and to communicate with each other.
Sitting on that curb with him, I did not feel at all like I was sitting is some dirty street gutter in the middle of the night in a foreign country half way around the world from where I grew up; no, I literally felt as though this man had graciously welcomed us unto his living room. He told us stories of how he had been mistreated in the streets, and he even showed us the street cat that he feeds and takes care of (he cared for this cat enough to feed it some of the little bit of rice he had to eat).
Before we said goodnight to him, I got to pray for this man too, blessing him in Jesus name. Just this simple act of kindness and love brought him to tears.
I tell you these stories for 2 reasons: 1) to share with you some stories from the field, letting know you what its like in the rest of the world that you may also join me in love and prayer and support for our brothers and sisters around the world–those that do not yet know Jesus but may someday, and 2) to tell you about one of my squad mates, Kristy Paruk, and her incredible love, generosity, care, and compassion for the homeless community around the world.
I told her that she is the servant that is talked about in Luke 14:21-23. I want more people to know about her–the kind of good work she is doing–and to come alongside to support her in the ministry that God has for her.
