Homeless In Vic

Hey all

Todays trip we went to Victoria to spend our time with the homeless. The drive down was fun and quite eventful with lots of noise and screaming K students in the seats behind me. I started out our trip confident and sure of myself and all fired up for this street ministry. But as we got closer to Vic I could tell I was in for more than I expected. When we parked we had a good chat as a group about staying together and what to watch out for and the do's and don'ts of the street. By this time I was kinda unsure if I wanted to do this or not. But being the guy in my group I was volunteered to wear the pants and direct us to where we were going.
We wandered for a bit and really didn't come across many homeless people at all. It was almost like trying to find a needle in a hay stack of people scattered on the streets. Then eventually an hour in we saw a guy sitting alone with his head in his hands and just kinda waiting on something, so we took the enichiative to go over and chat. He was kind of warry of us and told us right away that he really wasn't someone we wanted to talk to, but instead of walking away we just sat with him and mades small talk. Took the time to just chat, laugh and goof off. It was actually quite a lot of fun sitting there in a parking lot with this guy. A little bit into our conversation a friend of his came by. We started to talk to him, and man did he have a stories to tell. He told us about all these famous guys he played with. He also told us he had been playing guitar and other numerous instoments for years since he was 3 years old. Then he went and explained about how he had gone through so many guitars due to wearing them our and having them stolen and so on. The thing that blew me away was the fact that he didn't want anything but to play. He could have cared less about a home or money or anything, just wanted to play.

Other than those two guys we didnt get much of a chance to talk to more homeless. We walked around one of the shelters and just watched as the people interacted with one another and ate from the soup kitchen. It is really sad to see how most of them have ruined their lives. It reminds me of some of the kids I knew from highschool, and makes me wonder where they are.. if maybe they are out there like most of these people.

I would like to go back some time and spend another day with them.

Aaron