Day 6: Best laid plans...

Today was a difficult day. We started out by heading to a trailer park to do door to door prayer for people. This method of ministry had never been used before by John so we were sort of like test dummies for it. We got kicked out. Okay not quite but we definitely got told in a very not nice way that there was no soliciting (to which Brian said we weren’t selling anything) and no religion.

 

To make a long story short, we ended up shoveling dirt and moving cinderblocks all morning long. The job wasn’t big enough for everyone, so not even everyone worked. This wouldn’t have been that bad, except that for the guys this was the third straight day of manual labor when what we all really wanted to do was relational ministry. To be honest it was very testing, and I probably failed. All morning I had a bad attitude as did others in our group.

 

Finally we finished moving cinderblocks and headed back to base for lunch, base being the church. We all felt like this wasn’t where we were supposed to be working, and that these things weren’t what we were supposed to be doing.

 

During lunch Robbie brought these concerns up to John and we all talked about how we felt about what we were doing and what we’d rather do. We all decided to pray about our day and just listen to God and do whatever he instructed us.

 

After a moment of prayer, we all felt like God wanted us to go to Civic Center Park in downtown Denver. So we all loaded up and headed down there armed with a variety of footballs, frisbee’s etc. hoping to connect with some people.

 

Let me explain a little bit about Civic Center Park. Robbie called it Satan’s footstool if that helps at all. The entire park is beautiful, and there are a variety of people in it, including business men walking by in suits, and drunk homeless sleeping under trees. I saw more drug deals today than I ever thought I would. We saw some people on weed and it was refreshing because it was such a mild drug compared to everything else around us. This was the worst of the worst, heart of the city.

 

It was very different and scary for all of us but a really good experience. Throughout the course of the afternoon we all met and talked with different people. The girls spoke to a woman with spine cancer who was raising her grandkids for awhile who was really cool and they had good conversation with her. They also talked to a trans-sexual who had been abused as a child.

 

A story from my day:

 

John and I took the football and began tossing it to and fro in front of a very intimidating group of drug dealing young adults. Our goal in this ministry was to begin a game of catch with someone and continually grow our catch shape, and because of this build relationships and be able to open doors and talk to people.

 

None of the drug dealers came and played although they seemed to consider it, I invited a homeless man to play with us named Charles. At first I thought it might be a bad idea, but he was very excited to play with us and was a really nice guy. After we played catch for a little bit I asked him some questions about where he was from, and a little about his life. Eventually these questions led to me asking him about church and if he went or where.

 

His entire face changed. Charles said to me, “Come over here, these things don’t just happen, I want to show you something.”

I had no idea what he was going to show me, but we walked over to his stuff and he opened his backpack and brought out a bible.

 

The way he started talking it was as if he was trying to convert me. He knew the bible so well, better than a lot of people I’ve seen before. However he was very badly mislead and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise. We talked for about an hour (he did most the talking) and nothing I could say or show him in the bible would change his mind about things. He was convinced the only way to get to heaven, was to follow all of God’s commandments, essentially be perfect, and he didn’t think that it was impossible to do that even though he admitted that he was a sinner.

 

When we finished talking it was clear to me that nothing within my power would change him, only God. We left the park after playing a game of football with Charles and a guy names Reese (wacked out of his mind with drugs) and some of our group.

 

As we left the park a lot of people were saying how good it was and giving it a thumbs up and were really excited. Although I felt those feelings, the greatest emotion running through my body was sadness. I felt so sad that Charles was stubborn and wasn’t changing his beliefs. I felt so sad that everyone at the park was drugged, or selling drugs or both. I felt so sad that we had left the park in almost the same state as we had arrived there, and that most of the people we talked to wouldn’t even remember us tomorrow because of what they were on. It was a great expreince to be able to share Christ’s love with others, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything and you never know how God will use you and what you did, but it’s hard to see things like that.

 

One thing’s for sure, I’ll be praying for Charles.

 

We went to VBS tonight again, and I’m going to miss Marcos and (I realized I’ve been spelling Hosea wrong) Jose and the other kids we met there. They’ve been on my heart a lot lately. We also got to play basketball with some of the kids we met yesterday like Daniel and a kid named Jon and a guy named Ben.

 

We finished the day with worship and debrief at Red Rocks.

 

Please pray that we will finish our trip strong tomorrow.

 

Please pray also that we would be able to touch lives tomorrow and serve Christ.

Please pray for God to be glorified for the rest of the trip.

Oh yeah and we just found out that the girls all take showers at the same time, in one shower, that is a very small one…awkward