Prayer tour night, AKA Sunday night, AKA the night when you are trying to learn 14 new names, navigate, and talk about DC all at the same time, is always interesting. We drive all over DC, through the safest neighborhoods and... some iffier ones. I've seen police roadblocks, drug deals, and helicopters with searchlights while we were on the prayer tour, but all at a distance. Far enough away that you can be pretty sure the students didn't see anything.
This week, though, at our first stop, a homeless guy joined our prayer circle.
I was calling on volunteers to pray for issues in Adams Morgan (for example, racial reconciliation), when he showed up, walking right into the middle of the circle with his hand raised, a little lurch and sway in his step. He was fairly young and wore a hat. I never figured out whether he was drunk or high or both or neither. "I want to pray!" he declared.
It was about 9:30 PM and pitch black; we'd had a late start. Surrounded by a rookie CSM group, half-composed of middle schoolers, I honestly had no idea what to do. But, from the Chinatown bus stop a few weeks ago, I knew that being rude wouldn't help. So I asked the man to join our circle and started praying myself--that our only two leaders, both female, wouldn't skin me alive for it when we got back in the van. And, you know, that nothing scary would happen.
So my volunteers prayed--for the tour, racial reconciliation, and the working poor--and then the man, who said his name was Mark but friends called him Huckleberry Finn, prayed for a few minutes about his life. He had a hurt ankle, his grandma had leukemia, and he was tired of having to be "tough all the time" and wished God would just give him a break. We wrapped up the prayer, thanked him for joining us, and continued on our way. I was still shaking a little bit, even though nothing had really happened. Since coming to DC I've been yelled at twice by homeless men for saying something wrong or behaving wrong so I guess the whole thing tends to make me nervous now. I was already uncomfortable meeting strangers to begin with! But it turned out that Huck Finn really impacted the students, I guess, because they've been praying for him at debrief every night since then.T
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