Stories from the Streets of Ipswich

 

 

“Saturday night was very long and wet, but we saw a small miracle. Two Town Pastors were helping a girl at bus stop. She had no coat, money, bag or phone, and didn't know where she'd been or who with. The Pastors wrapped her in a blanket and managed to get her home address from her.  They asked Police to get a unit to call to her home to get dad to come out, which they did, but Dad said no. 

 

In the mean time, with some water, the girl had sobered up a little to give another address in Ipswich.  Police willingly went to this address for help. 

 

Shortly after, whilst the female Town Pastor and the girl (who was lying down covered in blankets) were still at the bus stop, two girls came and sat down too.  In process of conversation the girls 'happened' to give their address, which just 'happened' to be the address where the police were just going to find the girls friends.  The Pastor said “do you know this girl?”, uncovered the girl on her lap and it was their friend who they had lost 2 hours previously and thought she'd gone home. They were able to take her into a taxi and get her home”

 

 

“As we walked along a quiet street we saw a man about 10 metres ahead of us, walking in the same direction. He turned and, recognising who we were, began to be quite verbally aggressive, making provocative comments about God. With statements such as 'How can you believe in God? He let's little babies be abused and stave to death!'; he maintained a tirade. 

 

We both kept silence whilst continuing to walk along with the man. We silently prayed as he continued with his verbal objections to our faith. After about 3 minutes he seemed to calm down and become more reasoned in his comments.   Having let our silence speak, I decided it was appropriate to say something in a gentle way, agreeing with his assertion that the world was in a mess. 

 

Before long we were chatting pleasantly, and, although he was clear that he was not going to be changing his atheist views anytime soon, it was evident that our initial silence had done much to dispel his preconceptions and stereo-types of Christians as bigoted, aggressive and judgmental. The lesson we learnt is that silence and prayer can become a powerful counter-argument in situations such as these.”

 

 

“We were asked to help a homeless man to find digs, as he had nowhere to sleep. The prayer team was alerted. CCTV gave us a number to ring, and the place accepted him, offering a bed for the weekend if we could get him there (which was unusual). We asked the police for help and were told to go to the police station: the police then took him by car to the digs (wonderful!).”