It was a Thursday evening near the end of April, and I was out on the streets of Boulder with Greg, my volunteer Boulder County Cares partner. This was the next to the last week of the season when BCC sends out volunteers to look for homeless people at risk. The temperature seemed to drop very fast, but it was still in the forties. The wind had died down and the sky was clear.
Greg is from Canada and has a day job writing software manuals. He also works as a volunteer at the Food Bank on Tuesday evenings. We had a very interesting discussion when we first left the homeless shelter. Greg remarked that he had run across one of my articles on our church website while surfing the net for groups that work with homeless people. He started asking me about the teachings of Jesus and where they are found in the Bible. He wanted to know if I read the Bible a lot and if it is what our small group studies when we meet on Sunday evenings. He asked several questions about the New Testament and seemed very knowledgeable about the Old Testament.
I asked Greg if his background was Jewish, and he said "No, I'm Muslim." He told me that his mother was Christian. When he was growing up in Canada, she took him to Sunday School when he was very small, then his Muslim father decided he should go to the mosque. He has even made the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca with his father. His grandmother on his father's side still prays five times a day, and the family still arranges marriages.
Our first stop was a visit with the Hole in the Wall gang -- homeless people who camp out in a wooded area off East Pearl Street. Charles, who has been coming to our Sunday-morning worship at the Boulder Valley Church of Christ, lives there. I met Tom, a man that Charles wants to bring to church with him, and Bob, an older man who was very unsteady on his feet. Tom is off the streets now, but he had brought Bob to the Hole in the Wall so he would have a place to stay. Charles told me that Bob's mother had just passed away and that he hadn't eaten in two days. He was very grateful for the chili we brought and ate three cups. I had picked up a couple of yogurts for Arthur, another man who lives at the Hole in the Wall, because he has stomach problems and can't eat chili. Charles is trying to get Arthur to cut down on his drinking so his stomach will get better.
A little later we ran into an old friend, Clark, on the Pearl Street Mall. He lives on a rooftop in an alley behind the Mall. That night he was sitting on a little wall that surrounds a flower bed and was so intoxicated he could hardly stand up. I had only seen him this drunk once before. He was very depressed but is always glad to see us. All his belongings had gotten wet in the rain the night before, and his jacket was torn from sleeping in it. Clark is a very big man, and we couldn't find a jacket in our truck to fit him.
I asked Clark if he remembered the time a few weeks ago when he and I and my other BCC partner, Kevin, had stood on the corner and prayed. He said, "Oh yes, can we pray together again?" I told him sure, he could just sit there while we prayed, but he insisted on getting up. He had a very hard time standing. He put his arm around my shoulder and grabbed Greg's hand, and we swayed and prayed. Clark led a really beautiful prayer of thanksgiving. He thanked God for sending angels to help him. When our prayer was finished, I told Clark that I had never heard of a bald-headed angel. We had a good laugh, which seemed to make him feel better, and we persuaded him to sit back down. I asked Greg if we could go back to the homeless shelter and search our store room for a coat big enough to fit Clark and some gloves. We gave him a cup of chili and promised to be back in a half-hour.
We drove back to the shelter, looked through all the coats. and finally found a couple of sweaters and a long, heavy wool coat that we hoped would fit him, but no gloves. On our way back to the Mall, we gave a ride to a young man who had just arrived in town from Kentucky. I found out that he had graduated from a high school in Memphis where I did my practice teaching. He had all his gear with him and didn't need anything from us.
Clark was waiting when we got back and couldn't believe we had made a special trip just for him. While Greg was getting him into his new coat, I spoke with the inebriated man Clark had been talking with. Greg called to me and said that Clark wanted to pray again. We got him up and he hugged us again. In the middle of the prayer we were almost knocked over by the other man, who jumped up and grabbed us, wanting to be part of the prayer. We must have been a strange sight to the people on the Mall -- a bald Christian "angel," a Canadian Muslim and two drunks standing arm-in-arm praying to God-- but it didn't feel strange to me. What a beautiful night it was.
We ended our rounds at a car wash on West Canyon Boulevard where there are several tunnels under the road. We didn't go down into them because Greg heard something that sounded like chanting way down in one tunnel and said that it just didn't feel right. We're never supposed to go into any situation when one of us feels uneasy.
We went back to the shelter, finished up our report, and washed out the chili thermos. We both felt we had done some good, and Greg said that he really enjoyed being out with me. I asked him to come to worship with us at Boulder Valley on Sunday morning. He didn't say he would come and he didn't say he wouldn't. I really hope he does. He's a fine young man with a servant heart, and I treasure his friendship. And he's the only friend I've ever had who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Van Alessandro
