don / alex

 

tonight i ran into an old friend that didn't remember my name. i couldn't really hold it against him because the last time i saw him was nearly a year ago, and he was incredibly drunk. at the time he told me his name was alex but tonight he went by don. you can read about it here.

last time i saw him i was with jben, and we prayed that God would set him free from bondages. God even gave don (or alex, as he was known to me at the time) a physical symbol of spiritual freedom. you really should read the old post. it's a great story.

so tonight was "can we help?" and as we were walking back to the church from pioneer square i saw alex (only i couldn't remember his name either, and he told me it was don) sitting on the bench in a bus stop shelter. i stopped and said hello and asked him if he remembered me. he kindof did. i asked him how he was and he told me he was sober for a whole week now. i wow-ed and congratulated and asked him if i could pray for him to have strength to keep going on such a tough path. he said ok and my pastor steve came over and prayed.

as we were leaving steve asked him if he was connected to any AA meetings. don said no, so steve pulled out his resource book (part of what we do with "can we help?" is help people find and access community resources, agencies and ministries, so we had our resource book with all that info right there!) and we wrote down the phone number for AA of oregon, so they could help him get into meetings downtown. then he asked us if we knew where he could get a blanket. we tried to find a place to get him one tonight, but everything was closed. but it turns out he's native american. there are three full pages in our resource book for agencies and ministries that focus on help for native americans, so we gave him the address and phone number of a downtown agency that helps native americans get all the help they need accessing programs just for them.

just then the rest of our team came by on the way back to the church and one of the girls recognized don as someone her husband had prayed for last week when we were out doing "can we help?". i got to say, "look at that! see how much God cares about you?". i told him i'd look for him next week and he'd have to tell me all about how it went with getting to those help programs.


he is why we do what we do. the 'least' according to society - a homeless alcoholic with out even a blanket to his name. and yet he matters so much to God that God brings people into his life over and over just to say, "i love you. i haven't forgotten you. you matter to me. i can lift you out of this." what an amazing God!