Thanks to our volunteers the past two weeks, the food and supplies are great as well as your smiling faces.
Man, we were busy this past Friday. I don’t know if it felt especially hectic because it was just Ric and myself but we were inundated with folks. Even though there was a swarm of people all trying to make their requests for soup or cocoa known, it felt good to be out. There was a mild sense of decorum as the street kids/adults would wait for their turn, repeat their requests to two busy baristas trying to fill every order, while telling other more impatient people to be patient and wait their turn. It was a good night.

I met a couple of new people. They were not new to the streets, but new to me, in fact much of my non-soup serving time was spent in conversation with them. Lewis* was this baby faced kid with a slight southern accent who talked over and over again about his girlfriend who was just picked up by the police. He kept saying he didn’t want to lose her because they really connected, they had been through similar experiences, thought the same way, they even looked alike. She understood him. When I asked him if there was anything we could pray for him about he had a whole list, even though he said that he used to believe in God, but he hasn’t heard Him in a long time, and with shame and
sadness on his face he didn’t know if he ever would. Over and over again, even as he was walking away he kept saying he needed prayer.

Then there was Brady.* He had a face which spoke of the hardness of his 38 years. Before I knew it he was telling me his life story, how he grew up Christian until his parents started attending a Jehovah’s Witness church and then they left that for a life of drugs. He spoke of the confusion of his youth with all of the changes, yet his firm belief in the Word of God, the truth of Scripture. He challenged his parents when they would do things, like using drugs, contrary to Scripture. But now his life looked not too different from theirs. He described himself as a “criminally minded junkie who struggles with his Christian faith.”

Please pray for them and many others who, like all of us struggle with our Christian faith. We struggle to live what we know to be good and true, we struggle in our shame and become deaf to God’s beckoning voice. Please pray.
Things are happening in Capitol Hill, things that God created, initiated, and is moving. I had no idea that I would meet these two people and engage in conversation at length about life, faith, prayer, God but we did. As I sit and try to think of ways that we can change and adapt Fisherman’s Club I have these God ordained encounters with God in the faces of Lewis and Brady and realize that I couldn’t have orchestrated it any better. God knows what He is doing and it is His name, glory, and worship at stake here in Capitol Hill. He wants to see transformation in the lives of people here and is acting and moving so that would come to be, to His praise and honor. Please pray for the staff and leadership of Sanctuary and Fisherman’s Club that our movements would be in harmony with God’s grand movement in this place.

by Susan Kim

*name has been changed