There's a program called "China Now" that came to one of our chapel services last week. They are looking for Christians who are fluent and educated in the English language to go to Chinese Universities to teach 14-20 hours a week. Housing and salary is taken care of, so the rest of the 148+ hours of the week can be spent serving and evangelizing. If I wasn't in school, I think I'd already be in China. God keeps teaching me to be patient and letting me know there's endless options for mission work when I finish up school next spring.
I was able to visit a place called "Tent City" over the weekend with some friends from church. It's a little plot of land on the outskirts of Lubbock where there's about 100 military tents set up for homeless people to live. We were encouraged to just go out and make conversation, meet people, and hear some stories, to share time with the people there. I'm so grateful for places like this. They find people in need and help them get back on their feet. There's a "no drug" policy, which I'm sure isn't easy to maintain, but the place seems to be very respectable. I sat down and talked with a few different people, trying to be mostly in one-on-one conversation. I ended up meeting about four different people, each of them having a unique story. The first man I talked to was telling me his family didn't associate with him and he really didn't have any active relationships. When I asked him if he had a relationship with God, he said that really wasn't his thing. Later on in the conversation, he said it's scary not to know Jesus. Questioning whether I heard him right, he again said, "It's scary to be apart from Jesus." I got the feeling this man wanted a relationship with God but didn't understand God's forgiveness. This man doesn't need to hear about forgiveness; he needs to be shown it. Life is all about relationships and if evangelism lacks the relational aspect, then it's not fulfilling its purpose. My personal goal is to be diligent about showing love to people consistently as I tell them about God's love, otherwise they won't trust what I claim is "God's love".
There was a young guy there from Jamaica, who had come up to Midland on a basketball scholarship for the junior college. He's probably my age and he's homeless in a tent. People become homeless a number of different ways. While a vast majority has no compassion on homeless because of drug and alcohol use, I'd say homelessness is a result of three things: a lack of education, a lack of love being shown, and a lack of relationships. Drugs and alcohol are merely used to fill the void.
Something I think people don't realize is that there's a new generation of homeless people rising up right now, most of whom are underprivileged children in rough homes. If you find yourself lacking compassion for the older generation of homeless people, just take a look at the places where they came from: abuse (both sexual and physical), lacking one or both parents, poverty, having parents who were addicts, and on and on. If Jesus spent his Friday nights with the outcasts, why would I be satisfied with the movies?
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