A Really Rough Night

Nights like tonight remind of how alive and well Satan is in this world and how desperately we need Christ's saving grace.  Tonight, I sat in a park with each of my arms around a young prostitute who was sobbing and begging me to tell them that the dead body lying behind us wasn't their friend.  Yolani lost one of her best friends, Kenya lost her boyfriend and the father of her unborn child.  Kenya has lost 3 of her closest loved ones in the past year.  What do you say?  How do you comfort someone who has experienced such great loss and sees no hope for the future?  Loss is never easy and I've been blessed to experience very little of it in my life; I am extremely poorly equipped to counsel grief, but I pray that God was able to use my hands to impart a little bit of his love tonight.
While I was sitting on the curb doing my best to comfort Kenya, Angela walked up.  Angela was supposed to be at the hospital with her 18 month old baby who had been admitted to the hospital with a stomach virus and dehydration.  Angela couldn't make it 5 hours without alcohol, even to protect her precious baby girl.  So now Marbella is back at our building with Reina and we are pouring our hearts out in prayer to know what to do in this situation.  We can't enable Angela to live the life she's living and neglect her baby, but we can't knowingly allow that baby to be in danger either.  There are no right answers here.
God is bigger than all of this mess and he can conquer the darkness that is reigning in the lives of my dear friends.  I pray that we are able to reach their precious souls with God's love before we lose any more.

Please pray for the friends and family of 20 year old Osman.  He will be missed by many.