twenty-three

Morning #3, Blenz Coffee location #3. These places are everywhere. I thought, since last night we went to Agape Ministries and worked on E. Hastings with prostitutes and girls on the streets, I’d subject myself to a stark contrast and now I’m sitting in by far the swankiest Blenz I’ve been in so far. I’m at the bottom of some big business tower, watching the who’s-who of Vancouver waltz in, listening to a bit of Sinatra. Quite a bit of difference from the world we saw last night.

Agape Ministries is a Catholic group that has been around for about 10 years. Their direct focus is girls who are on the streets of East Hastings and Cordova, in the heart of the poorest section of Vancouver. They go out every night, every day of the year, and hand out cookies, candy, roses, and care packages to the girls. The know many of the women by name and keep very good track of who they are, where they have come from, and make sure they are accounted for and safe. It is a fabulous resource to women who have nothing, no security, are addicted to crack or something else, and many of whom are wandering the corners looking for work in the sex trade.

We took a group of 9 down last night for our first of 3 trips with Agape. I oversaw this group and we were led by a few of their staff around the streets. We prayed for girls who wanted prayer. We talked and heard their stories. We wrote down prayer requests, handed out candy, and just got to know them. It was incredible. It was shaking. It was frustrated, sick, upsetting, and filled with amazing grace. Right now, it’s hard to put into word exactly what I think about what I saw, or even just recount the details of it all because it’s so fresh. We were safe, but we were definitely in a completely different world than the one I’m sitting in right now.

I believe last night will be one of the most memorable pieces of this trip for me and for the group that went with me. We held back a lot of our thoughts last night from the rest of the group because they will need to experience it with the fresh eyes we did and see the world through their own lenses, not ours. I understand that every night is different, depending on the day of the week or the time of the month (welfare checks make things different). But it will be very interesting to process this together once we’ve all gone through it and have time to comprehend it all.

Please pray today for the students who went last night, that those fresh ideas will be worked out in God’s way. And please pray for our other projects we’re doing throughout the day, they are awesome too and we are blessed to be doing all that we are.

One Response to “Vancouver – Post #3”