Friday Night

Friday Night


Background: All week in classes we’ve been learning about intercession and worship (in a sense, “hearing Gods voice”. The Speaker was this guy named (name removed), really awesome guy who is a missionary in Chiinnahh. Really cool week, strengthening people’s belief in being able to hear God speak to them.

1) I’m running to the auditorium to have supper when I’m caught by this base leader “Ari” who asks me if I could help out the guy who he is with. He was with this homeless man who was quite out of it, shaking a little. I asked him if there was anything I could get for him, food, drink, and he asked for both coffee and tea. So I went and got this stuff for him and then he introduced himself as Peter. Now when he said his name, possibly because of the past week, something in me was like “Bam” Peter, there was SOMETHING about the name, and I began to think that because Ari had chosen me to help, maybe it was something significant.
I changed my mind after a while just accepted it as a good deed that I could do I guess nothing significant, and did my best to accommodate this guy, and then when Friday night meeting was over, I left to go to Kaio with my friends.

2) After being at Kaio for a while, some friends and I started getting tired and decided to head home. I walked downstairs ahead of the rest (Kaio is 2 floors) and when I got the ground floor, I saw this guy talking to one of the workers (Ashley). The guy looked like he was really intense into his conversation, so naturally I was intrigued. I went to sit down with them at the table and listen to what he had to say and it turns out he was a marine, he had been in Afghanistan for 16 months and that night had had a ‘bit’ to drink. He then introduced himself as Pete and I decided right there… woah, I should stay and talk with his guy. Kaio closes at 11-12, but Ashley, Kim (another worker there) and myself stayed talking with Pete until 2 am. As the evening moved on he began to sober up but also get a lot more emotional and spiritual about how much he wants God to be in charge of his life etc and how he doesn’t think that God could use him for his deeds because of all the “evil things” he’s done. He opened up to us that night about some of the stuff he’d done overseas and the pain that this guy felt… I can’t write well enough to have you understand. I was so thankful I could have been a part of that that night, apparently he’d started turning towards God a few months ago, but would keep slipping away, but last night I’m sure was something he won’t forget. It was powerful.


Side note: Ashley and Kim both did their DTS school with Justin! For those reading who know the significance of that. I’m going to get some contact info through them (they still keep in touch with him, so that will hopefully be cool).

3) Anyways, the trains stop going to my stop after 12, so I walked the two women home and then continued on to where I live (Called 228). Once I got back to 228 I went to brush my teeth and get ready for bed, and as I’m brushing my teeth, I can hear voices coming from the alleyway behind 228. I ignore it at first (with the odd though of “who could be up and talking with others at 3 am?”) But then I felt this immense feeling of “Go and find those voices and talk to them”
Now, this I completely brushed off thinking, “nah, I’m tired and that’s just my 3 am mind telling me to do that because of a) curiosity, and b) I had already had such a spiritual night I was ready to have any other kind of encounter” But as I walked towards my bed down the hallway of 228 again this urge filled me, like I was talking to myself, but different
“go find the voices and talk to them” so again I ignored and continued (I did put my ear up to the girls and guys dorms rooms just to see if it was people laughing at joking who were still awake, but nothing, it was outside). “Go and Find the Voices and talk to them”
Then FINALLY I decided, whatever it’s not going to do my any harm to walk around the block and find out where those voices are coming from so I went outside and began to walk around to the back of the building. Now along the road there are a few apartments and I could see light, hear music and hear laughter coming out of one of them, obviously a party, so I figured, “there we go, found the voices, bedtime” then again “Go and talk to them” now I’m thinking “nah…nuh uh… I’m not going to walk into someone’s apartment and go ‘hi, I’m Jon…I felt like I should talk to you’” but this feeling… this... ”voice” in my head was persistent, so I kept walking and then as I round the block, there are two people, and now the only two people I can hear, sitting on the grass across the street from the alleyway behind 228, (Two women, one on the ground, the other crouching, talking). I walk towards them and the one crouching quite abruptly tells me
“No, no, get away, this is an emotional conversation, not the time go away” so I awkwardly apologize for approaching and begin to walk away, and then the feeling “No, you go back now and talk to them”. So not knowing what to say, I walk down the street a bit more towards the base and then turn around and begin to come back. I’m out of their view, and as I approach, the one who had shooed me away stands up and leaves to go back to the party, leaving the one who was crying on the ground alone. So I think. Wow, perfect opportunity to “Talk to the voices I heard” and I start up conversation. I tell her I’m a Christian and that I didn’t want to weird her out but I felt God wanted me to speak with her. She scoffed me a bit but was still willing to talk and actually said she appreciated having someone she didn’t know to talk to. The Reason she was upset was because her boyfriend of many years and her had broken up…. his name was Peter.
We talked outside for a while and then went inside to her apartment because she was cold and continued to talk about everything from God to “which batman movie is best”. She wasn’t completely open to Christianity and defiantly had her opinions on it, but she did listen, and we ended up talking until 5 am. She has an incredible history… but I won’t get into that now, but one amazing thing is she’s had the queen of England stay over at her childhood house, and has had Nelson Mandela walk her to school holding her hand on 2 occasions. Wow.
Anyways, at 5 we both realized we should head off, she had her best friend’s birthday party she should go back and join them at that (a few apartments down these are ground level outside door apartments, not a complex) and I remembered that I hadn’t turned off my alarm clock for weekdays so it would be going off in 15 min…..much to the distaste of my roommates on an early Saturday morning. So I went home, slept for 3 hours, woke up and told some people my adventures of sorts haha. Watched some episodes of “Scrubs” on my friend Will’s laptop with some friends, then decided to type this up on a friends laptop while it was fresh on my mind so I could put it here on a blog.



I think I’ll go to the beach today.


Sorry for no photos I’ll take some at the beach and update by tomorrow, so today’s post is a ‘quick’ fun read. But there is no doubt in my mind that there was something significant about my encounters yesterday with Peters and those situations, and I choose to call it God.