Note: Mike has been featured in a couple of Light on Las Vegas Street blogs since January. I thought you might appreciate this update on Mike from my colleague Sarah Stacy,
the Director of Spring Rescue Mission's
Resource Advocate Program.
Early last fall, the Resource
Advocate team at Springs Rescue Mission met Michael. Camper, drug addict, felon, and very
quiet man. What was notable about Mike at that time was that nothing
about him was particularly remarkable. He was never loud,
attention-drawing or even looking for help. He camped with a rowdy crowd
and it’s possible that their general boisterousness accentuated his quietness.
Mike's life changed in early January when he woke up in his
tent with a foot so swollen he couldn’t put on shoes. Somehow he made the four-mile-plus trek to the homeless health clinic to learn that toes on both feet
were frostbitten. He spent a little time in the hospital to make
sure there was no infection and right away made his way to RAP to figure things
out with his advocate. As if this wasn’t trial enough, less than two weeks
later his daughter was killed in an auto accident that left his youngest
granddaughter on life support.
“Until Miss Susie, no one ever cared about me." Mike’s advocate did
work hard to make sure he had clean dry socks every day, a special pan to soak
his feet, and some privacy in an unused office for that laborious task.
How do you sit and soak in warm water when you live in a tent in the dead
of winter? Susie was with Mike when he got the news that his daughter had
been killed, and she was there to listen to his pain through the process of
hitchhiking to Denver on weekends to visit his precious granddaughter,
Angel. But there was another team of angels who came to Mike.
Lisa and Tim are faithful volunteers in Supportive Family Services who offered him prayer on February 23rd, and he accepted their offer and came to understand and accept the offer of his Heavenly Father for redemption and a new life. “I never knew it was that simple and that I didn’t have to earn it” Mike says frequently. Life certainly hasn’t become perfect for Mike since receiving Jesus, but he has been clean and sober, even through making the decision recommended by medical staff that he withdraw life support from his granddaughter who gently passed the next day. Still he has persevered. He has turned to God’s Word on an MP3 player for growth and encouragement. He has led one campmate to receive the Lord.
And yesterday, he walked into my
office, put the key to the first housing he's had in years on my desk, and simply said "Thanks."
The key – maybe it really came long
before the physical key to an apartment was in his hand.
