Chance encounters

When I go to the mission it's rare to come away without an unforeseen  blessing. I go to mentor one of the men in the drug and alcohol recovery program and while waiting for him I struck up a conversation with another man in the program, let's call him Jose. I asked him what it was that made him decide to come to the mission. He told me he was a gang-banger in L.A. and at some point he got fed up with the life and joined Salvation Armies program, stayed with it and graduated from it. After graduating he wanted to move away from his familiar stomping grounds and that's what took him to Portland. He stayed with Salvation Army in one of there programs, and was doing well until.... he met some "wild-eyed" beauty that swept him off his feet, and he left the program. She lived in a rough part of town and to make a long story short, one night while he was with her, two men started kicking down the door! She ran to the bathroom and he, dazed and confused, was just standing when the men burst in. They both drew on him with 9mm's and from six feet opened up and fired at him 15 times! When they began shooting he said it was like everything turned to slow motion, but amazingly he felt the presence of the Lord on him so strongly he felt no fear! He felt a bullet tear into his left arm but felt nothing else. After one of them ran out of ammo. and the other's gun jammed, they turned and ran out leaving him standing there with blood everywhere. His girlfriend came out of the bathroom, saw him and he called out and said, "Help me." Then he collapsed. The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital. 

That was enough, after he recovered, he left her and headed to the bus station to go back home. On his way, as it happened, a fella who works at the Union Gospel mission program, struck up a conversation, and he found himself joining the mission. 

The bullet that struck him hit his forearm, bounced off a bone and traveled up his arm and bypassed his heart by a millimeter, and stopped lodged in the back of his shoulder! He promptly took off his shirt and had me feel the tip of the bullet right under his skin! The surgeon's scar was nearly the length of his entire arm! 

Just then, the man I came to meet entered, let's call him Bill, he is friends with Jose, the man sharing the story, and they say they belong to the club of "Fifteen." Fifteen mercies, Bill overdosed on Fentanyl 15 times before he fled to Christ, and Jose was shot at close range 15 times, and all the bullets missed him but one, and that was in his arm. I'll tell you, the presence of the Holy Spirit was so heavy on all three of us I thought my soul was going to burst! 

 Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”