Today, today. So many thoughts and emotion have gone through my head today. I’m not sure if I can pen them all down. First I will just tell you some of what I was up today. Well, me and about seven other people started out our morning by going running at about 7:10 in the morning. I realized how hilly Vancouver is. We went for our shower time at SFU. We went to a bible study, looking in-depth at the Temple as a type and shadow of Heaven (Hebrews 8:5). We looked at prayer and related it to the different parts of the temple. It was really good. I think that the greatest thing that I got out of it was just the fact that prayer should be much more then just asking God for things. We don’t pray to God to fill our needs, but we pray to God to be with him and he will fill every need. He also talked about not always me focused prayers, but praising God for who He is. Then our group got split up into two teams. One stayed at the campus and pasted posters up, and talked to students. 
I went to Lifeline ministries (The ministry to the homeless) to get things prepared for that night. Cooking, cleaning, packing, and reorganizing stuff. I got a chance to talk with one guy, Dave. Dave had lived a crazy life before coming to God. I am not sure how to really describe Dave; he has a very weathered looking face from the years of his crazy lifestyle. He spent some major time in jail, and had been a major dealer. He also had been a truck driver, and seen a lot of North America. He was telling me how different Vancouver is from other major cities. Because of the laws of the land, which sounded a lot like lawlessness to me, the street people do pretty much what ever. Yes there is a lot of violence, but their drug use is blatant. He said that he would not be surprised in the least bit
if in our ministry time we came upon people shooting up or smoking crack just on the sidewalk. Other cities have the same sort of problems, but they just are not as obvious about it. So the time came, and we went out. It was a very difficult thing for me to be out there on the street with these people. You know that there is bondages and brokenness and need of healing for these people. I got to talk so some people, but I don’t know how effective it was. I walked around and passed out candy to a lot of the homeless men as they waited in line for their food or cloths (or both). As the crowd dissipated, I guess a smaller then normal crowd because of it being welfare day (were they get new money), we moved on to a different area. I guess that area that we moved to is a much worse one, and I could see it. There were just tons of street people, coming out of the woodworks to get the free soup and rummage through the clothes. Each of them with a distinct story, and hardened faces came by. I tried to talk to some of them, but I had a real struggle getting the conversation anywhere regarding salvation. I have never been affronted by that much poverty. I have seen and talked to a lot of people in hard places, but this just seemed amplified and extreme to anything that I have ever seen. It is getting to be about 1:30 AND I have an early morning tomorrow.
I went to Lifeline ministries (The ministry to the homeless) to get things prepared for that night. Cooking, cleaning, packing, and reorganizing stuff. I got a chance to talk with one guy, Dave. Dave had lived a crazy life before coming to God. I am not sure how to really describe Dave; he has a very weathered looking face from the years of his crazy lifestyle. He spent some major time in jail, and had been a major dealer. He also had been a truck driver, and seen a lot of North America. He was telling me how different Vancouver is from other major cities. Because of the laws of the land, which sounded a lot like lawlessness to me, the street people do pretty much what ever. Yes there is a lot of violence, but their drug use is blatant. He said that he would not be surprised in the least bit if in our ministry time we came upon people shooting up or smoking crack just on the sidewalk. Other cities have the same sort of problems, but they just are not as obvious about it. So the time came, and we went out. It was a very difficult thing for me to be out there on the street with these people. You know that there is bondages and brokenness and need of healing for these people. I got to talk so some people, but I don’t know how effective it was. I walked around and passed out candy to a lot of the homeless men as they waited in line for their food or cloths (or both). As the crowd dissipated, I guess a smaller then normal crowd because of it being welfare day (were they get new money), we moved on to a different area. I guess that area that we moved to is a much worse one, and I could see it. There were just tons of street people, coming out of the woodworks to get the free soup and rummage through the clothes. Each of them with a distinct story, and hardened faces came by. I tried to talk to some of them, but I had a real struggle getting the conversation anywhere regarding salvation. I have never been affronted by that much poverty. I have seen and talked to a lot of people in hard places, but this just seemed amplified and extreme to anything that I have ever seen. It is getting to be about 1:30 AND I have an early morning tomorrow.
posted by Jacob at
1:42 AM
