Spanky...

Despite the fact that it is barely 25° degrees outside this evening...I'm really glad I was able to be outside hanging out with my friends on the streets!

A lesson I learned quickly when I started doing outreach was not to get too bummed out when we "lose" someone...people are ALWAYS moving around...ALL the time...so it's impossible to keep in touch with everyone you meet out there. Once in awhile we "find" someone out of the blue. Well, it's never an accident...God always seem to put us where He needs us...and sometimes it turns into a nice surprise!

Kim and I met Spanky back in July...and as I walked under a bridge downtown tonight to visit my friend, Rodney, I was introduced to this "new" guy...Rodney was like, "This is my friend, Jena! I'm famous, she will tell you!"...and he does this almost every time I see him. (I was looking at pictures on Flickr one day and someone had taken a picture of him out panhandling...I told him about it and joked that he was famous because he was on the internet...now he tells everyone...it makes me smile!) So, naturally, I asked him what his name was and he says, "Spanky". I got pretty excited...Here is a little bit of what I wrote back when I met him this summer...

"I would like to tell you about Spanky. He promised that was his real name, so as far as I know, Spanky really is Spanky. We bumped into him tonight on Meridian Street. He told us he dances in front of the bars and sometimes that is how he earns money; he was actually dancing when we approached him tonight. He definitely got a smile out of all of us. What really bothers me though, is what happened to him and his friends last night. Spanky and his friends sleep in a parking garage downtown and he woke up last night to someone kicking him in the side, once he realized he wasn’t dreaming and that someone had really just KICKED him WHILE HE WAS SLEEPING, they did it again. He told us he asked them why they were kicking him, but that is about as far as he took it since he is a pretty small guy and he didn’t want to get into a fight. Then he told us he was really scared about things going on in town this weekend. He mentioned that in the past years, during this same weekend of festivities, he has had other homeless friends both SHOT and STABBED, for no other reason than hatred. I’m really uneasy about all of that. I’m not sure how someone can have the nerve to kick a sleeping man, let alone stab someone just because their lifestyle seems strange or bizarre. And this sure isn’t the only story I’ve heard about violent acts being carried out against the homeless people of this city, but this is just fresh in my heart and in my mind." [Rude Awakening...]

We looked for Spanky in quite a few parking garages downtown for a couple weeks after that...no luck. He tried to explain to us where he slept, but we couldn't find him.

But, back to tonight...Rodney told me he found Spanky laying in an alley and he was really, really drunk! He said he "drug" him under the bridge and had been taking care of him for a couple days! Rodney is such a sweet guy...I just love him! We did our best to get Spanky whatever he needed...socks, gloves, a meal...but unfortunatly no underwear. He made sure to tell me he was "free-ballin' it", haha! But seriously...Spanky needs some prayers. He is supposed to be going into rehab on Tuesday. He told us he would find us when he gets out and that he would be a different man. We let him know we were going to hold him to that. So, it looks like I'm going to "lose" Spanky again...but this time I hope I DON'T see him for a while...pray that he can stick it out in rehab and get back on his feet and off the streets!