Saturday...

**This post may be a little bit disturbing, but my desire is to be real and transparent about things that I see here. I promise, though, the disturbing story has a "happy" ending**

Last weekend, when I was in Craiova, I was told about a shopping center off of one of the metro stops, so on Saturday, I decided to do some exploring. I asked my language supervisor exactly how to get there and she told me. I found the place without any problems. To give it the best description, it is like a market. There are shops everywhere that are owned by different people, but a lot of them sell the same things...Much like markets in Central America or I'm sure around the world...minus the produce. I wandered around for a couple of hours and made a couple of purchases. Then, I ate lunch at McDonald's, because I had another stop to make.

I decided to go down to another metro stop where there is a mall. It's the same one where I had the produce fiasco. I had been told that there is a Christian bookstore somewhere on the piața close to this metro stop, so I walked all the way around the park in the inside of the intersection to see if I could spot the bookstore. I found what I thought might be it, but wasn't sure.

I was across the street from the building that it was in. The building (like most of the buildings here in Bucharest...) was at least 7 stories tall, and had billboards across the top of it. I saw a crowd of people looking up across the street toward the top of the building. Right by the building, there were a couple of ambulances and a fire truck. I looked up to see what people were watching, and there was a man standing on the ledge at the last floor above the building. He had climbed over the railing and was just stainding on the ledge. It was obvious that he was a homeless man who was high on shoe glue. Unfortunately, there are many people (grownups and children, both) who live on the street that sniff shoe glue. This is not the first time I have encountered this tragic way of life....they have them in every city I've lived in outside of the US (and probably in Dallas, too...).

My first instinct was to panic and walk away because I didn't want to see him land on the hard concrete 8 floors below if he jumped off the building. But it was like a trainwreck...you can't stand to watch it, but you can't stand to tear your eyes away, either. I called my language supervisor and asked her exactly where the bookstore was, and she told me. I found it...it was on the bottom floor of the building that everyone was staring at, and it was closed. While I was on the phone with her, I told her about the man on the building and asked her to pray for him, as I was doing. By this time, there was a police man or security guard on the other side of the railing from the man talking to him.

Since the bookstore was closed, I went back across the street where people were watching. Shortly after, the man turned around, climbed back over the railing, and ran off across the roof. There's no telling how long he had been up there before I got there, but at least 15 minutes passed from when I first spotted him to when he got himself back to safety.

I guess the point of my story is that even in the midst of opportunities I have to share the Gospel, there are people who have no home, no food, no money, and no hope. The shoe glue that they sniff alters their thinking (duh), and causes them to do crazy things like stand dangerously 8 stories above hard concrete without the protection of a rail between them and the chance that they could fall to their death.

Please pray for those who seek warmth and the sensation of a full stomach from the chemicals that they inhale. Pray that someone will seek them out and get them help. Pray that this man might one day find hope that is the reason he did not fall to his death on Saturday November 15, 2008.