Still thinking about Seattle

So, the time in Seattle was pretty amazing. Usually on trips like this I spend most of my time shuttling students, dealing with logistics and needs. This trip was different. I was an active participant in the service side of things. It rocked me good.
One quick Story: We went to a park one night that has the nickname “crack park” for obvious reasons. When we got there for some reason I was very scared and felt a strange sense of oppression. There were about 30 people in the park all engaged in some sort of nefarious activity. I asked my group if we could sit and pray for a moment. During that time of prayer I asked God to take away my fear and to fee me from it. As we walked into the park I noticed a woman crying. We went up to talk to her. She was a bit scary. What we acertained was that she didn’t have a place to sleep that night. I offered a suggestion of where she could go and get help and she asked me to drive her there. When I told her that I couldn’t do that she began to scream at me and told me to go to He**. Then in a quick turn she asked us to pray for her. We walked away and prayed for her. On the way back by her I mentioned that we had prayed and that sent her into another screaming tirade. She yelled a bit more at us to which I replied that I was sorry she was hurting and that we were going to “move on.” The whole thing was scary but it taught me a lot. I think that Satan has a hold of places like that and the oppression that I felt in that park was real. It’s hard to explain except to say I believe that evil and drugs go together. Leaving that moment I realized that the woman asked me to fulfill some very specific needs that she had. I wish that I had been able to help her out with those needs. But, that wasn’t my role there at the time. She was hurting and I couldn’t help. I realized through that moment that experience was good for me because it taught me how much I needed to rely on God. Now, my fear wasn’t taken away and I still felt the oppression but I also felt a huge amount of compassion for that woman. I wasn’t offended or even discouraged about my talk with her. If anything it just reminded me that I had to love people like that even more. I think that showing love in that way would have been best facilitated with meeting her tangible needs but I couldn’t do that at the time. Anyways I still think it was a helpful experience.