"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” ~Joshua 1:19
This year, I joined a homeless ministry club called SALT where a group of Corban students hand out snacks, pray, speak and potentially share the gospel.
God used SALT to change my outlook on the homeless. Before doing SALT, I would simply walk past homeless people, not acknowledge them and continue to be in my own little world.
One particular experience with SALT has heavily tested my faith and led me to question God and ask why a perplexing event would happen to me and what I could possibly learn from it.
Each Friday night with SALT prior to this event, I had never encountered a homeless person who tried to purposefully harm me. I would go up to people, ask how they were doing, give them a bag of food, share the gospel and simply talk to them.
By pursuing all these actions, I never had a problem–until the last night of SALT for the semester. As usual, we were divided into groups, with at least one gentleman per group. This is to ensure that a gentleman could protect us from harm’s way that could potentially come our way.
Later, I got paired up with a boy from Corban named Chico, a female Willamette student named Sarah and a friend of hers, as well as a man by the name of “Speedy,” a former homeless man who has been involved with SALT and other forms of street ministry.
As a group, we ended up going to a park right by the Union Gospel Mission, a men’s homeless shelter. Chico and I both saw a gentleman sleeping on a park bench and so we decided to go talk to him. After we finished talking to him, Chico told the others that he thought it best if we were to split up versus being one group, so in that way when we were going to talk to other lost people they would not get intimidated.
Afterwards, Chico and I headed toward the bridge and thought we saw some potential people we could minister to. Those people actually ended up doing some ministry of their own. Throughout the week we found out that they brought dinner to the homeless, shared the gospel and lead a bible study.
Eventually, we had to go our separate ways so Chico and I ended up walking away from the bridge and eventually found this lady, who potentially could have had demons inside of her. She was yelling bizarre things and speaking in tongues. When we approached her I knew from the start that things were going to get ugly.
She kept cursing, had her hood down the entire time, and claimed that she wanted to "get out of rot." She also claimed to have known the Bible front to back. I asked her what her favorite passage of scripture was and she screamed, “I don’t have an f*king favorite!”
And over and over she kept telling Chico that Jesus was her son not him. Chico kept shouting and praying that the devil would be rebuked from this woman.
Eventually, the woman became so infuriated that she walked away. I only saw her eyes for five seconds, but right there I could tell demons were inside of her.
Chico kept persisting those demons had to be rebuked from her. So we ended up walking a little bit behind her and asked how we could pray for her.
She ended up losing it and had her hands out wide ready to literally choke Chico and me. She kept coming toward me and I got really scared, so I ended up ducking behind Chico. I was quite frightened because her hands barely touched his throat.
For me, that was possibly one of the most scariest events to happen to me, but I’m so thankful I’m alive and breathing.
What I took away from this event is a heightened awareness of how only God can change this woman's heart, and that God is constantly protecting me. What's more, He reminded me that, even though she was really frightening; she and I are both sinners.
Now that I reflect back on this bewildering event, I thank God for continuously testing my faith. I can honestly say that, if I did not decide to put all my trust in him that night, I may have been killed.
