About 4 months ago, I concluded a life-changing year serving the poorest of the poor as a missionary to the homeless in Denver. Upon hearing about my experience, almost everyone I meet wants to learn more about it, asking questions like: What did you do? What was it like? What did a normal day look like? Was it hard? I bet that was really rewarding, wasn’t it?

Without fail, I get a chance to talk about the type of people I served. Many of them were alcoholic. Many abused drugs. A lot were just plain lazy. I knew that some of them had little to no control over their behaviors due to mental or physical disabilities, but there were still many who did. And I loved my experience going out and giving my best, rather pathetic attempt to model the love of Christ to everyone I met. There were days when it was really rewarding to show Christ’s love to those who so rarely experienced it. There were days when I got to see real change in someone’s life, whether they got permanent housing, told me they had been sober for a record number of days, or finally got accepted into a drug rehab program they desperately needed to be a part of.

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(Photo Credit: Flickr/Arno roca’ s eyes)