This is a prayer I prayed with a homeless friend of mine named Art, after he shared his testimony of all that he has been through. He lost his job, all his money, and motivation. He found the Lord, but was struggling. What little money he had been receiving from disability was no longer provided for him, and he lost the place he was staying because he didn’t have the money for it. I think we were both in tears as we shared and prayed for each other.

Art has a real passion for people and for God. We would always talk when we saw each other, but this was the first time he ever opened up to me about his life and about God.

The next week I took a City Challenge group out with sack lunches to pass out to homeless people. Art knew I did this each week and found me. He hugged me and said, “The Lord is amazing and truly does answer prayers!” as he started to cry. I asked him if he had gotten a job, and he exclaimed that yes, a guy hired him to help remodel a big apartment building, which would provide work for close to a year if not more. We praised the Lord, and then he walked around with me and my group all evening, talking to people and praying for them.

My name is Brian Troyer. I’m from Hartville Ohio, and I am 23 years old. This past year I have been at the Rosedale International Center in Columbus as a SEND staff intern, serving as the Community Outreach Coordinator. As the Outreach Coordinator, my main responsibility was to find, contact, and organize outreaches for us staff, City Challengers, and REACHers. I spent a lot of time emailing, calling, or visiting outreaches in order to get our name out there and see if we could help them in any way.

With City Challenge, after the scheduling, it was also my responsibility to teach about reaching out to people, what the Bible says about it, and what it can look like to reach out to those around us and love on them. I would then usually take the group “brown bagging.” We would pack lunches, go to downtown Columbus, pass out the lunches and ask people if we could pray for them. Occasionally we would give a Bible to someone if we felt God putting it on our hearts.

These were awesome experiences and God was always faithful, always allowing us to pass out lots of lunches; I think one night we passed out forty-five. We got to pray for people, but the biggest thing was that we always met someone who actually blessed us more than we blessed them. Some shared about their faith or prayed for us as well, or just were friendly loving people with a genuine joy no matter what circumstance they were in, because they knew the same Lord we serve.

God showed up in so many incredible ways this year whether in City Challenge, REACH, or during the winter with just us staff being here. One of the greatest things about being the Outreach Coordinator was that quite often I got to keep up relationships with people that I met or worked with along the way. This was an incredible blessing and another way that I could help show God to those I met.

One evening a group of us asked a guy at a bus stop if we could pray for him and he said yes. It turned out he had worked a 15-hour day that day and his ride home left without him. He had no money on him and had a three-hour walk home, so we prayed that God would provide a way home for him. We left him and started walking away, but we had only taken a few steps when we heard a yell. “Praise the Lord, he truly does answer prayers!” We turned around and saw the man running toward us with a bus ticket in his hand. He was so joyful and in awe at how the Lord worked so quickly. He said thank you again, praised the Lord once more, and ran back and got on the bus.

The past year has been a growing experience in so many ways. There have been lots of ups and plenty of hard, tiring downs, but through it all God was good! I feel that in this past year I have grown so much that it’s hard to really explain. I have seen God’s faithfulness and provision so often. Especially in all those times that I felt like I couldn’t do anything and was completely helpless, he would work and move.

God has challenged me to live my life in constant accountability to John 17:15-17, where Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Peter says he does, and Jesus replies by telling him to feed his sheep. These verses are a challenge to live life fully out of my love for Christ. If I truly love Him and live completely out of that love, then I will feed his sheep, help those in need, speak truth to everyone I meet, bring shalom to chaos, and love those who are hard to love. God has challenged me to give up my selfishness, to give up what I want and feel comfortable with, and to be so in love with Christ that I proclaim Him in every action and word.

The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t take a SEND internship to live this way; it can happen in Columbus, Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and anywhere that people love the Lord and are seeking to represent him in everything they do.