Pretoria: Conclusion

It was the last day of our inner city outreach in Pretoria and I was ill. A combination of a cold and tiredness knocked me out. I spent most of my day in bed, unconscious. How was it then that this became the best day of the entire outreach for me?

It is my conviction that a single conversation can completely change the course of someone's life. All it would take right now for you to have any range of emotions and reactions is the right person to approach you and simply say the right combination of words. Probably one of the easiest examples would be proposal, there are few conversations as charged with emotion and as integral to life change as that one huge question. (Do you like the way I used an example in which my sum total of experience is precisely 0?)


So as you may have guessed I had a single conversation which completely changed not only my day but my entire view of our 2 week outreach in Pretoria. I had dragged myself out of bed to make a cup of tea (totally worth it) when the guys who had been out doing ministry returned with stories and the excitement that comes with having thrown caution to the wind on the last day of a short term outreach.

It was no longer a surprise to me to hear Tonys name thrown around. He had now become one of the regulars at the coffee house where we were serving and quite a few people had gotten to know him but this occasion was different.

'Did you hear about Tony? Did you hear the news? We gave him a bath and cleaned him up, gave him a shave and Sonia called a home and now he is gone!'

Information overload.

'What!?'

It turns out that on the day when I was barely able to get out of bed Tony was set free. They bathed Tony  (you will know that is no easy task if you have any experience with caring for the disabled.) Gave him a hair cut, shaved his beard and while all that was happening the Coffee house team made some calls to their contacts and found a home for him to stay at. Tony now has a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in, his own bathroom and 3 meals a day.

That conversation changed me. I heard it a following 3 times from the different people involved and every time  I was welling up, every time I heard how the event had impacted the individual that was involved, how God had used that opportunity to break pride, grow compassion and solidify hope in people.

A single conversation can change your life, it happened to Tony when some 20 year old kid from the UK and his friend decided to sit down next to him and just talk, it set in course a series of decisions that means that Tony no longer lives on the streets.

But the single most important conversation you, or anyone else can have is the one in which you talk to God for the first time believing that you are not just talking to a wall or a ceiling but to a person who knows you. It is a conversation in which you approach with only one thing to say, just one plea. Jesus Christ - the only one who paid the price so you don't have to. When you believe that for the first time, when it takes root in the core of who you are you change and that change makes Tonys story pale into insignificance and he would agree with me on that point.

There is a reason that we find stories like Tonys so appealing, it's because it is a small picture of the bigger story that we are all involved in even if we don't know it. We are all living life on the streets with no hope until we go to the one who can help and when he helps he does so in abundance.

(I take no credit for any of these photos except the title - obviously it was not me taking them as I was in bed, I did do the edits though :)