| November 13, 2004 Praise God! Our second weekend in Can Alley was awesome. The Lord delivered 12 people to us to witness to. We ran out of potatoes, got to pray with 2 people, wow, what a Saturday. Once again we planned to be down at the recycle depot at 10:30, however, once again we were delayed, getting there at 11:00a.m. We found out that the Depot is called Mill Valley. Upon arriving at the Depot, I noticed a man pushing his empty cart away. I quickly parked jumped out of the van and headed down the road after him. He stopped, I was praying, God do you want me to talk to this man. He started walking away. Hum, maybe God doesn’t want me to talk to him. The man stopped. Hi, I’m Scott, would you like a baked potato? They’re free. Sure, he said. I shook the man’s had and said. What’s your name. Don. How are you Don. I’m OK. Can I give you something to read? It’s the Gospel of John; it tells how much Jesus loves you and wants to be your friend. Sure, I’ll check it out. I asked if he had anywhere to stay, he said sometimes his brother lets him stay with him, sometimes he stays in the park. I said we have sleeping bags in the car, would you like one? No thanks I have one. I asked if there was anything I could pray for him about, he said no and was on his way. After returning to my family, we crossed the street to position ourselves at the entrance to the alley. As I looked up the alley, I saw Brian and another man walking the other way. So off I went up the alley to meet up with Brian. I crossed the road to find Brian rooting around in a gas station garbage can and his friend in the dumpster. I shook hands with him and asked if he remembered me. I offered him some potatoes and asked him how his week was. He told me he had found lots of good stuff in the dumpsters this week, including a big pan of ribs, a whole cold cut sub – still in the wrapper and a bag of audiotapes. I have found that Brian repeats himself a lot and that everything has a dollar value. “A pan of ribs – that’s like 40 bucks”, “a whole cold cut sub – that like 20 bucks”, “and look at all these tape, we could get like 2 bucks a piece for them.” At this point the other man came out of the dumpster. I introduced myself and he told me his name was “Bruce Ellen Francis”. I gave him some potatoes. He said, no sour cream on these. I said, sorry man that’s all I got, just butter and salt. “Yah, I don’t have the salt shaker, Brian said. I should have brought the salt shaker, I think Dumpster has the salt shaker” “Yah, Dumpster is suppose to have some batteries for us. We have a little tape deck you know, so we can play these tapes.” After a few more words, I asked if I could pray for them about anything. They said no. I said, well I got hot chocolate at the other end of the alley if you want some. |