Monday, July 7, 2008

remembering the east hasting days

Back when I was a student at TWU in Canada I was a part of this outreach that brought together a group of students who would spend their Friday nights hanging out on East Hastings (probably one of the most ghetto places to be in Vancouver) working with the Union Gospel Mission. We would spend our evenings handing out hot chocolate and just talking to people who usually would get ignored by those who passed by. It was the kind of place where drug addicts and prostitutes would live not my usual hang out.

It was always hard for me to go down there but, the kinds of conversations that we would have and the hope that some of my friends had for the East Side was inspiring and I kept going every week. I made some of my closest friends at college through that outreach. One of the people who inspired me to keep going was Amanda a student who had graduated the year before I arrived and had helped her friend Trisha get off the streets. Everyone knew that wouldn't happen very often, but the idea that it could happen kept a lot of people going back every week hoping the very best for the people who seemed to be trapped down there.

I recently received a link to an update that Amanda wrote and thought it would be cool to share if anyone was interested. If you're interested you can find the article here.

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live the questions now... R.M. Rilke