The Sleeping Boyfriend

As Stephen and I turned the corner we noticed them immediately. She was small and standing, he was made of muscle and fully laid out on the sidewalk asleep.

We approached quickly ready to offer help. There were two other guys standing alongside her. As it turned out, they’d stopped to help and had been with her for two hours while her boyfriend slept it off on the pavement below. His muscled arms were as big as my thighs, and he did not want to move. The ironic thing is that they were only about a 5 minute walk from their hotel. Stephen and I decided to call the center to get someone to bring the wheel chair down. We figured if we could lift him into the chair, we could wheel him back.  Within 10 minutes Lucy and Jaime showed up, and we made our first of many attempts to lift the sleeping boyfriend into the wheelchair. Remember those muscles I mentioned earlier? Well anytime we tried to lift him, he would get angry and just start swinging out to hit whoever was disturbing his sleep…lashing out at the very hands that were there to help. While Steven and the group tried to lift him, I maneuvered the wheelchair and prayed. After our fifth attempt he went into a deep sleep (snoring included) and at that point we tried again with success! Once we got him in to the chair, we had him back in his room and in bed within 10 minutes without any more fight from him.

The guys who stopped to help decided they wanted to see the situation through, so they walked back to the hotel with us. Along the way one of them said to me that before we’d showed up, he’d been thinking that he wished there were people in Ibiza whose job it was to help people…and then of course we showed up! I explained to him how amazing it was that we'd run into them, since they were not along our normal route. We’d only ended up on that particular street because we'd helped someone else back to a different hotel in the area. Every night in the prayer room we pray that God would send us into the situations he wants us in. So I’d say there was a little divine leading at work.

Most nights when I go home I end up reflecting on the conversations and situations I've found myself in that night. What is God teaching me in the situations he puts me in? Tonight was a reminder that the impossible is possible! After our third attempt to get “the sleeping boyfriend” in the chair, I started to get a little discouraged. Here’s this huge guy who starts throwing punches anytime we tried to move him…how does one deal with that?! But in the end a little prayer and a little perseverance won out. It’s a reminder not to give up on the tough situations in my own life. I’m also reminded AGAIN that prayer works. When we pray we’re speaking to God our father who cares about us and the situations we find ourselves in. I think God not only answered our prayers last night, but he also answered the prayers of a frustrated guy who'd stopped to help a stranger on the streets. His whispered wish was answered by a God whose watching.

I'm still raising money to cover my expenses for the summer. If you'd like to donate Click Here