Wrestling with Faith

We often get to entertain travelers. These are modern-day hobos, traveling from city to city. But the reason they travel isn't often post-depression economics. It's usually because they have been so deeply hurt that they want no connection with society. They often call themselves "houseless" or "home-free." We just call them street-dependent, and we love working with them. 

 

You can read more about travelers here.

 

Here's another faith encounter with with a traveler:

 

"I want God to stop taking a dump on my life. I feel like he just plays with me. He gives us rules and yet he doesn't follow them. He just does what he wants!" We discussed God's authorship of the universe and apparent right to do as He wants, but how the Bible teaches that God is good and right. Then we talked about what God really wants, which is us to live well and right and to know Him. That led to a discussion of grace and forgiveness. The traveler really wanted to believe that, but jumped to the conclusion, "So Jesus is just a whipping boy for everything that people do wrong. So I can just keep on doing it." I showed him how Paul had explored the very same questions. And ultimately we stop doing bad not out of fear of punishment and not because we are actually perfect. We stop doing bad things because we come to love Jesus, the guy who takes the bullet for our past sins. We start to understand: "Why would I keep on doing that to my friend, Jesus. Maybe I can control myself. Maybe I can stop heaping more crap onto Jesus. Maybe I can stop taking a dump on Jesus' life." The traveler recognized this is where we started. He smiled as he comprehended that maybe a relationship with God was bidirectional. We pray that this new information will transform his entire life!

 

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Unexpected Mercies

We keep records as a ministry. It's been a growing burden as we serve more clients more frequently and more volunteers help out. We are dedicated to being a "Class A" organization and I think that means we keep count, records, and monitor ourselves closely. Every month we know our finances, our reach to supporters, prayer team members, newsletter readers and followers. And we know how many and what types of contacts we had with clients. We don't serialize or violate our clients privacy with our records. We simply record them in a prayer book. If they share a name or a birthday, we record that. If they tell us how we can be praying for them, we write that down. We share the requests with our prayer team later the same day.

 

Recently, a client passed away. The client has mentioned his real name in a conversation with us... something that shows that he trusted us. And we had written down the name of his dog. These things allowed us to search the Internet for his obituary after we got wind that he might have passed away through the grapevine of clients. We searched diligently and daily, hoping and praying that we would not find confirmation, but we did, three days after his death.

 

From there we were able to find the funeral home. We placed a carefully worded sympathy note for the parents and family on-line. We don't know what they know or don't. Sometimes grieving parents want nothing to do with their child's street life. We express sympathy, mention that we served their child, give a way to contact us, and wait. Frequently they call.

 

In this case, the mom called the very next morning. She wanted to know more about her son's recent travels. She didn't understand her son's decision to start traveling after three years of college but she knew. She didn't like his drinking and more recent experimentation with drugs, but she knew. She knew what drug addiction can do to people, so she simply wanted to know what her son was really like on the street.

 

We were so delighted to tell her that her son was sweet, respectful and kind. Addicts can lose everything as the drug takes over, but her son wasn't like that. He was the only kid to thank a donor at the Christmas party. He didn't steal. He didn't lie. His charm and intelligence was evident in his interactions with people.

 

The names of our clients fill 13 little books so far. But worn little books allowed us to share with this mother a little picture of the the son she lost. It comforted her. And it will help comfort his younger brother and sister and entire family. We found the day we met her son. We found the day we last met him in the pages. We found a time we were able to give his dog a saddlebag pack. We found a record of how he interacted with us over more than 15 months whenever he was in Austin.

 

We will miss this client. We grieve alongside the family. And we are grateful to be in ministry to all street-dependent young people who pass through Austin. And we will continue keeping records and praying with our clients. Unexpected mercies flow from the pages of our little prayer books that we would never have expected. They are worth it. Our clients are worth it. God is entirely worthy of it all.

 

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A Traveler's Faith

Travelers are one of our client subcultures. They are named for their habit of drifting, often by "hopping trains" or hitchhiking. Some have vans or cars. They come to town, stay a while and then leave. We love having them and often see them several times a year. Some travelers come to visit us only once a year, but have been doing so for several years.

 

Travelers are very practical and know what they want. They often take action to get what they need and then move on. They are tough looking and tough acting. They like dark colors and are often very dirty from the train and from camping outdoors. They usually travel with dogs and in groups. They refer to traveling buddies as "road dogs." They aren't thugs but they can be gruff. They often drink alcohol and heroin runs through the sub-culture as well.

 

We usually meet travelers on our street outreach activities--we call that our "front door." Despite invitations, it's not easy to get travelers to come inside to our core services. As a result, we often work with travelers outside on the street, asking about faith and sharing ours along with other relevant conversations. But we are overjoyed when they do come in. Recently we had a few. Here are sample conversations from a prayer time:

 

"I want to be a righteous person. I want God to give me peace. I want God to help me reconnect with my daughter. I'm traveling to see her now." With this person, we ended up doing one to one faith counseling after prayer time. The traveler shared his somewhat universal views of God and faith. He had many questions about Jesus and heaven and hell. He wanted to know what the Bible said about reincarnation. He listened intently to what Jesus says about heaven and judgement. He understood and said he recognized the truth in it. We had a long discussion about comparing religions and showing him common things (morality, creationism, and righteousness) but how grace was unique to Christianity. He really began to understand that. We pray these seeds will give him great hope for the future and ultimately bring him to understanding of Jesus Christ personally.

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Feeling Those Feelings

He needs time to heal and rest.  I got a phone call from a traveler. He had been jailed for riding trains for at least a month. While he was in jail, his dog had been put down by authorities. He depends on the train, but he's afraid to ride it. He depends on the street but he wants to go home. I encouraged him to come see me. He hitch-hiked in to avoid the train.

 

When he got here, he was angry at first. He hoped I would simply become his bank account and send him by train or plane wherever he wanted to go. Once we worked through that, he was very open and contemplative. He attended services with us. He began to talk. But even as we began to connect, he began to feel the need to leave... to travel.

 

He has used drugs about half his life. He doesn't know why. However, he hasn't been on drugs for the past few months. He shared, "I am starting to feel feelings. And I don't like them." He's depressed. I asked if he knew why... "No." I asked about his childhood. "It was crappy. I didn't know it at the time, but it makes me very sad now. I don't want to think about it."

 

While he told me these things, his bodily language became visibly withdrawn. He was literally inching away. I called him back and we talked more. "I suggested to him, "What if you gave yourself some time to heal from this latest trauma with the he train and losing your dog? Time to heal and rest would be good, right?" He agreed. He added that he has a relative where he could go and do that... a place where he wouldn't be allowed to use drugs and a place that would be safe for him. We agreed that this sounded wonderful. We talked about what that would be like. "You'd probably want to let yourself feel these feelings that made you sad. And then maybe you'd want to share them with someone safe... a counselor, a friend, a pastor, ... a confident. Then maybe you could let go of them. If you keep pushing them down, you're just going to keep carrying them with you. Maybe it's time to stop traveling for a while and deal with them." He agreed, but was scared.

 

That evening he left for a train spot... a place to jump on a train. He wasn't sure whether he would be going to his relatives house (one direction) or to a place to join some other travelers who had messaged him on FaceBook (another direction). I pray for his safety... physical and emotional. I pray he finds a safe place to process his baggage so he'll be lighter for the road. I'm thankful for our relationship and pray that it continues. 

 

Pray with us for the street youth.

"To know, love and serve street dependent youth."
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Volunteer or donate (tax deductible) online
Arrange a meeting with me: tungle.me/terrycole

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