Friday, March 21, 2008

Boston Spring Break Update - Part II


The first story I will tell you is about a resident at the Boston Rescue Mission named Paul. Paul had been living at the Mission for about 4 months. He was addicted to alcohol, heroin, and oxycodon pills, to name a few. He has been divorced and has two sons and lots of nieces and nephews. His family has a hard time really trusting him because of the way drugs and alcohol have controlled his life. We met Paul early on during our visit to the Mission. Our third night there, I came up to our floor and saw Paul looking at the book of Philippians with one of the guys in my discipleship group, James. James was walking Paul and another guy named Billy through what he has learned in Philippians this semester. Paul just loved everything that James told him. He loved it so much that he gathered us together every night after that for a time of reading at the Bible and prayer. God really used our time at the Mission to impact Paul's life. While we were there, Paul told us a story about how he told some lady on the street that Jesus loved her (that was his way of sharing what he knew of the Gospel). We bought him a study Bible before we left so that he could continue the ritual we had started of looking at the Bible every night. It was cool to see Paul's desire for others living at the Mission to experience some of the same things that he had experienced. He would always try to get others to join our group at night, or he would get people together in a group so that they could hear some of the things we were talking about (the Gospel and Jesus Christ). Yesterday, i received a letter from Paul and here is what was in the letter: "God has blessed me by bringing a guy like you into my life to help understand there is a better way. Things are moving along for me one day at a time. God bless. please keep in touch." We have many more stories similar to this about how God used us in the lives of the residents at the Boston Rescue Mission that we will tell you over the next few weeks.

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