More stories from the streets

We got a call from Tango Victor asking us to attend to a lad in need. We got him to have a little water then another lad turned up who knew him. They were both in rooms at the student accommodation block. We said that if he would

come with us we would get him back to his room. Boy, was it a long walk trying to keep him vertical and in a reasonably straight line, plus keeping him quiet. It was a humorous journey to say the least!

 

His friend had a swipe card to let us in. The friend said if we could find our way out he would make sure his mate was OK. We retraced our steps into the car park, then found we could not get out because all the doors and roller doors needed the swipe card. We also discovered we couldn't get back to the friend either! So there we were like two rats trapped in a huge cage.

 

I was about to phone our team leader for help when a door opened and the security man came in as he had seen us on the security cameras! It does have its little dramas and humour!

A young chap was sitting on the ground. He had been there for a couple of hours and we were making no progress with him. He would not drink any water and just sat there, head bowed and hands over his neck. We got the "I'm alright" comment we so often get, but he wasn't. He'd had four pints as he normally did, but tonight it had a severe effect on him.

 

We eventually got him to stand (my partner's persistence) and he was able to walk. We supported him for a while until he was able to walk independently, though we had to stop frequently as he was bitterly cold (it was that that helped to revive him) and in agony as his shivering muscles were in spasm. He was mortified at his condition. He confessed that he would laugh at the wasters he'd seen being attended by Town Pastors. He had fortunately not been aware of the comments that some passers-by were throwing at him when he was on the pavement.

There was a large number of people in town. The police said that if widespread trouble broke out they couldn’t arrest everyone because the arrest process would take the police off the street and the situation could potentially get progressively worse. What we perceived was a need to prevent the spark that might start the fire. Very soon afterwards we spotted and alerted CCTV to an aggressive situation.

 

A lone policeman obviously heard the call and moved in to ‘have a word’. We tracked at a reasonable distance, observed & prayed, but identified we needed more Godly intervention so walked round the corner to phone CYM to bring ‘all prayer’ to bear, appealing with a single heart to the Father. We returned 30 seconds later to observe and continue prayer and there was a significant change in the man. Previously very angry – he now embraced his friends in a relatively relaxed way seemingly at peace – our God had moved in response to the prayer – Praise you Lord!

We had a lovely friendly conversation with a girl, not particularly spiritual but completely of her instigation. Mostly in the past she had always been very negative and rude. Her life seems to be on the up at the moment – Praise God. We also had a good spiritual conversation later in the night with 2 young

men just wondering what life was all about. My partner left them in no doubt what they needed to do and they were certainly thinking.