Flew to Las Vegas, Skipped Church, Bought Cigarettes and the Secret Service...

What a subject line to start off with! I joined my wife and traveled to a medical conference in Las Vegas. It’s an interesting place to visit. However, neither of us are gamblers, and I fall asleep too early to see the shows. I’m an early riser, not old!

So why did I skip church? I didn’t feel like trying out a new place to worship and talking to strangers.
Bottom line: I just didn’t feel like going. Have you ever had one of those mornings?

We stayed in a hotel off the strip that didn’t have a casino to avoid the masses. It was at the opposite end of the strip from my wife’s convention. That Sunday, I rode over to the convention with her in the cab with the plan of walking the three miles back to the hotel room. Our staff bought Fitbits this past spring, and Curtis, who works at Exodus Place, did a staff step challenge. I’m a bit competitive, so the three-mile walk fit perfectly in my plan to win.

If you have ever walked down the strip at Vegas, it’s like a maze with escalators, skywalks that lead inside casinos, and the mono rail, which has you go up three flights and then back down one flight to the boarding platform. There is hardly a straight line to walk, and I had to navigate using casino landmarks.

While on my walk to win the Fitbit challenge, I noticed the homeless men and women of Vegas. They look the same as the homeless in Michigan. You have the professional beggars that look like normal people, the drunk beggars, the addict beggars, and then the mentally and physically challenged.

I never give to the first three types of beggars; however, I have a heart for the mentally and physically challenged. At Exodus Place, we play a big role in helping the homeless get the right care that they need. Giving food and shelter is the easiest part of the equation. Helping someone afflicted with mental and physical challenges takes a tremendous amount of effort and requires developing a relationship.

So here I am, on pace to beat my walking speed record for three miles, when I see a man looking in the shrubs by a CVS drugstore. I slowed my pace out of curiosity and noticed him picking up cigarette butts. This is the same thing that happens in Grand Rapids when someone doesn’t have money to buy cigarettes. They have rolling papers, and after they have collected enough tobacco from old cigarettes, they can roll one for themselves. As you can imagine, they smell worse than normal cigarettes.

As I started to speed up to walk past the man, I noticed how skinny he was. He was probably 6’2” and weighed around a hundred pounds. I slowed my pace and looked at the man. He was wearing sandals, and his feet had open wounds and sores all over them. It made me want to get sick because they looked so bad. While I stood there, he became even more insistent on finding used cigarettes. I wasn’t the only one watching him, as he was desperate and talking to his imaginary friend.

The Holy Spirit puts “God appointments” on my heart, and I thought of a passage in the Bible: Matthew 25:35-40 (NIV):

“35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

“37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“40 The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

What was I going to do to help this man? Buy cigarettes. I first went into CVS and asked to buy cigarettes, and they looked at me like I had three heads. I was in my workout clothes and didn’t fit the look. They told me that they no longer sold them but the store across the street did. You have got to be kidding me! This was supposed to be a simple task that didn’t interrupt my day.

It’s me time!

So off I walked to the other side of the street. You can’t just cross the street; you must find a walkway. It was at least a half-mile journey there and back. I got to the store and asked to buy cigarettes; again, they looked at me like I had three heads.

The cashier asked me what kind, and I said the cheap kind (I hate cigarettes). Then, I thought that probably wasn’t nice, so I asked her what she would recommend for the homeless man across the street. She knew of the man and said Marlboros. I was planning on using my $5.00 in cash that I had in my pocket but then had to pull out the debit card because they cost over $10.00 with tax. “Am I stupid doing this?” I thought. It was becoming a real inconvenience, and what if I got back there and the man was gone?

Before I left the store, the cashier called the man by his name and said he probably doesn’t have much longer on earth. She told me that giving him money probably wouldn’t have helped him because he has a hard time crossing the street and figuring out how to buy things. She then went on to tell me how the smarter homeless people take advantage of him; they take his money or buy him the cheap cigarettes with his money and pocket the difference.

I felt renewed in my mission to get back to him quickly with no thought of myself. As I crossed the street, I didn’t see the man anymore, but as I got closer to CVS, I saw him lying next to a pillow. As I got closer, the smell of him overwhelmed me. I asked him how he was doing for cigarettes, he said he had none. Then, I asked him if he wanted some (I wasn’t going to push cigarettes on him if I had misunderstood what he was looking for in the bushes). His whole posture changed, and he smiled at me and replied yes. I could only hand the cigarettes to him, speechless from the emotion that swelled up in me. The pain and smile on his face spoke volumes of his troubled life.

So, I went to Vegas, skipped church, and bought cigarettes. I did feel like God was living in me and through me.

 
P.S. About the Secret Service, this is my staff, full of smiles and “No problem, boss,” which is the typical response I get.

I cringe inside for the many unreasonable and selfless things I ask them to do, such as identifying a dead man who sneaked heroin in and overdosed, convincing a man that hasn’t had a shower in weeks to get into the shower (and standing by the man for reassurance), cleaning up feces because of a bad medical reaction and then doing it again the next day for another person, and knowing a person’s past crime and treating them with love and compassion. Television makes this stuff look glamorous and exotic, but it’s not! A person must deeply care about making a difference in another person’s life.
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I then watch the staff do their everyday duties while stopping to give someone a hug. Who hugs people who have been homeless and abandoned? We do! Think about it; if you didn’t have your family, who would give you a hug or encouragement?