the one

I think one of the sweetest things that AWOL has adopted from Donna’s leadership with 70x7 is that she always began ministry and ended ministry in prayer. Each week before we hit the streets our team unites in prayer with expectant hearts and each night we end outreach with filled hearts because God always goes above and beyond our expectations for the night. I love that His word says He prepares good works in advance for us. It’s so comforting to know that it is Him doing all of this…. Not me, not Jaime, not our team or those who serve alongside us… but HIM.

On Sunday we had plans to meet up with the girl I blogged about here. We showed up at 2pm like arranged and then we waited….and waited… truly the thought of her not showing up didn’t cross my mind. I knew we would see her and my mind was resolved on that. At 2:23pm I looked at Jaime and said that doubt had entered my mind and for the first time I thought we weren’t going to see her that day. So in normal Jaime fashion she said “well duh LF let’s just go find her”. We had no idea where she lived because any time that we had gone to her house it was dark out and after going to multiple houses in one night everything sort of bunches together. So we prayed and asked the Holy Spirit to tell us where she lived. Jaime got a word and so we followed through on it and went looking for her word… two streets later we saw a street sign with the word she got in the name of the street….so we went down it. Very quickly in we realized this street was familiar and we had been on it before…. Then we saw the house and we laughed because last time we knocked on the door to this house we were pretty sure we were going to die. But, we both thought that was the house so we went and knocked on the door. Sure enough, it was her house but she wasn’t home. The woman who answered the door told us to go back to the corner she usually is at and wait for her. So we did.. and nothing.

We had driven around and then driven some more and each time we got to this one specific street I turned right. So on the 4^th or 5^th time down this street Jaime says “LF go straight” so I did, passing my right turn. Then Jaime said “wait…. Didn’t we go to a house on this street once before and she was at a house on the corner down here…. Remember the house that you got out of the van and totally bit it and fell on your butt”…. Yeah I remembered, I also remembered Jaime laughing hysterically at me. We pulled up to the house on the corner and thought we would go knock on the door. A man across the street hollered at us and asked if we were looking for _______ and we said yes and he said she was inside that house. So we knocked on the door, someone answered, opened the door, and then walked away… it was eerie. So the guy said “you want me to go in and get her…. You her family” we said “yeah” so he did… and sure enough she came out. She hugged me and said she loved us so much and was so sorry, but she couldn’t have lunch… She told us she was still planning on leaving the streets for rehab the next day.

We drove off and we had a great peace… I think the day was more about her knowing she was worth going after, worth pursuing, worth looking for. People need to know that they are worthy of love. People need to know that someone cares enough about them to seek them out. People need to know that when they don’t show up that they are missed. People need to know that they are worth the extra mile. Just as God lead us to where she was – He is also leading her to where she is going….

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? Matthew 18:12

We left the neighborhood and our prayer was “God – please don’t let us see her tomorrow night….” because then it would mean she did what she was going to do… it would mean she left the streets, she went to rehab, and she was entering a journey of restoration…

So Monday happened…. Check back tomorrow ;)