The Trip
There are three of us: Lance, Matt, and Myself (Paul) who are going to be traveling to eleven major cities in the U.S. for a month by car. We are going to spend two to three days in each city just hanging out with the homeless. Our goal is to simply listen; listen to stories, life experiences, views, certain issues, what they do, what they want to do, and just whatever they wish to talk about. We want to make friends. We want to show them that they are loved. That Jesus loves them, and that we love them. Before we go our separate ways we will take time to share the grace of Jesus to anyone that will listen. We will leave our new friends with a New Testament bible, a pair of socks, and, I pray, more peace than before.
Trite I know, but awareness is what we hope to accomplish from our journey. The awareness we hope to raise is two-fold; to show the homeless they are loved deeper than they could ever imagine, and to soften the hearts and open the eyes of others as well as ourselves. Awareness, however, is just the first stage of anything; we cannot stop there, we must act upon the issues we become aware of or it becomes something meaningless and empty.
The Book
The stories we hear, the faces we meet deserve to be heard and seen by more people than the three of us. After the trip we are going to be writing a book composed of the stories. Each chapter is going to be about one of our new friends. Comprised of text and Polaroid’s. We pray that this book can help all of us learn to open our hearts. Instead of turning a blind eye, we might turn an open ear. Maybe we can start to see who is really behind the sign.
behindthesignproject.com
