Tonight I left work after about a 14 hour moving extravaganza. Over the course of about 13 hours, we moved over 150 homeless men from our old facility to our new one. It was exhausting, full of unexpected questions, and tiring.
After our first dinner and our first chapel service, everyone began to settle in to the new place. Curfew is at nine o’clock, so we figured the check-ins would slow to a halt by then. I had been walking around, tying up loose ends, checking to see that I didn’t put any old guys in top bunks or young & spry guys in bottom bunks.
A guy I’ll call Sean came up to me. “Dan, can I show you something?” We walked into the suite reserved for men in our discipleship program. We stood just inside the door so as to be unnoticed. Four guys were playing pool and one was turning off the air hockey table.
“Would you *look* at these guys? They are *so happy!* They are hanging out & playing pool together!” One guy waited his turn & flipped the TV station from a commercial to a rerun of Jeopardy.
“Ok, Sean, look at this.” I took him into the kitchenette where two guys were talking about protein shakes. J.T. was sitting with a Bible journal, writing his daily entry. Across the table was another guy with a bag of chips from the vending machine and his Bible open.
We went down the hall and I showed Sean the atrium. “There is a euchre game. Those other guys are watching women’s NCAA. In the cafe (which is what we call the room with our vending machines) there are 5 guys watching & talking about the discovery channel. If you go over to the Man Cave you’ll see 7 guys watching Top Gun (in seats that used to be at Roberts stadium).”
“That’s just what all of this is for, isn’t it! It’s really being used!” Sean could see it was really turning into the mission we wanted — even on the first night.
“It’s cool! Praise The Lord!” I said.
“Hey Dan,” a guy named Bob caught me at the door. “When are the prayer rooms that you mentioned open? I just want to go read and pray.”
“We’ll do that tomorrow,” I said. “We’ve opened enough cool stuff today.”