Now "The Wall" was one of the safest places to do homeless ministry. It was frequented by police, and there were always a lot of volunteers...safety in numbers, right? As fun and as great as the wall was, I knew the Lord was calling us to go deeper, go harder, and go to the ones who weren't willing to walk down to the wall every Sunday. The bridge, at any given time, had between 150 to 200 people living under it. Crack addicts, whores, prostitutes, alcoholics, meth-heads, stoners, gutterpunks, tramps... any name you can think of, we were sure to encounter. I argued quite a bit with God about his one, but after He lead someone to collect donations for over 300 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I pretty much knew there was no getting around it... we had to hit the bridge with Love... We arrived a little afet 11:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and my initial thought was "What the hell are we doing... this is crazy..."... and of we went, sandwhiches in hand. We passed out sandwhich after sandwhich, usuall two or three at a time, to every person we encountered under the bridge... Now I'm NOT sayin that we had a fish and loaves miracle, but we handed more than one sandwhich to a LOT of people, and at the end of the brige, still had a full box of sandwiches left... We encountered several interesting people under that bridge... some hopeful that one day, they will be getting out of their current situation... others, just hoping that they could survive the day to score another hit come night. Some people were incredibly thankful and happy for their sandwiches, some were mad they were getting fed peanut butter again. Initially, I thought to myself "you should be thankful to have a sandwich.", however, I don't feel like Christ woulda said "for those of you who like fish and loaves, you're in luck... if not, sucks to be you!!"... so I smiled, apologized, and left them with the sandwich anyway! The sandwiches brought forth some amazing conversation, beautiful smiles, warm hugs, strong handshakes, and a few tears... they also brought on a ten minute argument with two drunk guys, who were VERY much set on paying us for their sandwiches. We made a few more rounds under the bridge, and decided it was time to look for a few more folks to give the sandwiches to... Not really sure where to go next ,we heard someone from behind us yelling... that's when I'm pretty sure the Lord sent us the crazy lil fella from Baton Rouge... What hapened after that, was by far the most amazing conversation of my life, and I can't wait to share it with you... but for now, I have to go... please keep coming back!! Thanks, God bless, and GOd love!!!
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