Daniel

In Kalispell MT, were I grew up we have no homeless. Never in my 18 yrs of life have I ever seen anyone sleeping out on the side walk until I moved here. I was expecting paradise and a tan! I did get an amazing golden tan, but let me tell you this is not the paradise I remember four years ago when I stayed in Waikiki.

I’m sad to say that day after day of going out to Chinatown I got use to seeing the people sleeping on the streets and I got use to seeing people on drugs and every day the pain of seeing the homeless and afflicted slowly went away. All that pain came rushing back like a wave crashing on a rock when I met Daniel.

Daniel is an alcoholic living on the streets of China Town. Daniel’s story touched me so much because the things he told me he did to his family I could relate to. He was desperate for someone to share his life story with so when I came along he opened right up to me. He told me about his life in Kauai, his big house on the mountain, his beautiful little wife who kissed him good bye every morning as he went off to his high paying job. Daniel is a design major. “My life was wonderful” he told me with tears in his eyes “I had everything”. He told me about the many times his wife kicked him out because of his 30 year long drinking problem, “She always took me back….always”.

One night Daniel came home from the bar to find all this things packed and his wife asking for a divorce. He never thought she would go through with it but she did. Instead of getting help he moved in with 3 Swedish girls in Waikiki. He told me that he was having “too much fun” and he started drinking more and more. He lost his job and apartment and ended up on the streets where he has now been for the last year.

“I know I need Jesus, but I just can’t believe” Daniel tells me. He says he is too smart and a lot of Christian theology does not match up in his mind. Yet every time I got to the park he asks for me to pray with him and each prayer ends with him in tears. I pray that one day the veil will be lifted from his eyes and he will believe with faith like a child.

Daniel has been trying, so he tells me, to get into treatment. He actually stopped drinking for about 14 days. It was very cool. He cleaned himself up and stopped hanging in the park with his drinking buddies. He was spending time in the Library, reading books and looking for a job. We were praying hard for him to make it.

Just the other day I ran into him…in the park…drunk.

It broke my heart.

Please pray for Daniel and all the other men and women living and dying on the streets of Hawaii.