History pt 10 - Our first delivery!!

Boy was I nervous!! I did all I could to make sure the three youth that came were not aware of my condition. We met at the church then went to the Holiday Inn at 175 and 1 and met Joe there. Joe is just like Anne, a huge heart for this ministry and tons of experience. Joe will take care of us.

We immediately saw a couple pan handling in the median. Joe had already talked to them and they had a tree identified on our side of the street where we would leave the bags of food. OK, first contact, but we could only wave and try to hear the thank yous over the roar of the traffic. On to the next stop.

We went south and Joe lead us to a camp within a stones throw of Route 1, but no one could see the tent It was also right by a river. Without the traffic noise, this would be a nice place to spend a weekend. The guy who lived there was really friendly and very talkative. I had three female members of the youth group with us that day. I will never forget what our new Homeless friend said when Joe introduced us, "Joe! You brought me angels today!" I guess that was the first time God spoke to us as we were out in the field doing this ministry. Yes, we were angels (that even included myself!!).

As you know, as I write this, many months have passed and I can finish out this story. We only got to see this new friend maybe 3 more times. Each time he greeted us very warmly and loved to talk to us. Once he was a bit drunk, but he was still so nice to us. He ended up getting out of the woods. He moved in with his girl friend. We heard he was working and all seemed well. Much later, we learned he was in the hospital in critical condition with pneumonia. He died just a few days after we heard he was hospitalized. The leaders of the different churches that are a part of this ministry decided to have a memorial service, apparently, his family did not want anything to do with him even in his death. So sad. The memorial was nice, many of the homeless people came and the pastor really did a great job. We had been hoping a sense of community would develop. We did see it, God was already making good out of a very sad situation.

This friend did talk about God and his faith when we saw him. We feel he is a Christian and now he is with Jesus. It will be nice to pickup our relationship when I get there.

Back to the first delivery. I only really remember the last stop. This is the "famous" camp that everyone talks about when they get involved. I can't tell you where it is, we want to allow our new friends as much privacy and respect as possible. It is in a very unusual location, thousands of people pass buy it every day and most, if not all, are totally unaware. Fortunately, no one was home. When I saw the tents, the trash, the fire pit, the stuff, I was very, very overwhelmed. Again, I was trying to keep it together for the youth. It was so incredible to know that human beings were living right here like this in Howard County, Maryland in the United States of America. We left a bunch of food and moved on. Wow, what an image that I will never get out of my head.

As we were leaving, Joe said he had a special job for one of our girls. There was a lady living in her pickup truck in the Walmart. She even had two large dogs with her. Joe said they had been trying to reach out to her with no success. He was hoping one of our girls would be the thing to open up a relationship. We were in the parking lot, Joe pointed out the truck and asked who would like to take food to her. It was pretty quiet for a while, then one of them volunteered. She went to the truck, knocked and talked very briefly. She came back with the food. The lady said, thanks, but she was OK.

Again, I can finish this story out - It has a better ending. Much later we learned that an entirely different organization eventually broke through and started to help her. The last thing we learned was that she was getting into some sort of housing. Pretty cool.

We did it, we did our first delivery. We meet a bunch of new people, we saw things I will never forget. We were on a journey following God as He revealed Himself in this new ministry.