We Found a Needle in a Hay Stack

It's is suggested that as many as 50,000 people become homeless in Baltimore, Maryland annually; and we found the one we were looking for!!!

I received a call late last week from a friend and I was asked to help her find her homeless uncle in Baltimore, Maryland. I have some knowledge of Baltimore because I uses to hang out there in the late 90's but I had no recent knowledge of Baltimore.

We began today with the realistic understanding that we may not find her uncle. But with faith, direction and divine guidance from our Lord and Savour, we will be successful in our quest to find her uncle. The first few shelters we visited we met resistance from faculty because of concern for the safety and security of shelter residence and we found a few shelters to be condemned. We began to get a little discouraged; but, before we allowed discouragement to take root we made a decision that we were not going to be denied and we were not leaving Baltimore without her uncle.

The more she would talk about her uncle the more I became connected to him. I did not know her uncle personally but the more I listen to her talk about him the more I felt I know this man... He had characteristics that reminded me of my brother, uncle and father. He was no longer just another homeless man that I would walk by in the street without a second thought. He was more then that. He became tangable to me!

We called one shelter and we were notified that he was there 2 days prior. We immediately went there to get an idea of where he would be at. We were told he was in the area, so we drove around for about an hour and we met this homeless man name James. James pointed in the direction of where her uncle usually sleeps but he wasn't there. We turned the corner and we saw a man sitting up among all of his worldly possessions in the middle of the sidewalk. I role the window down and I called out his name and the man looked up and say yes that's me (my friends eye welled up with tears) she began to question him to verify that it was him. The man answered her questions and began to talk about her other family members so clearly. I asked him one more question "Are you ready to go back home?" and he replied with tears in his eye's "I been ready to go back home."


We began to get her uncle prepared to leave. We coordinated a shower for him at the shelter, supplied him with clean clothing and a meal to eat. As we were about to take her uncle out of his homeless lifestyle the Chaplin of the shelter came to us and said "I don't think it's a good idea to put him in your car because he soils himself and he has mental issues." But, through our short conversation with him we quickly understood that this man was not a drug addict or alcoholic and his only real issue was that he did not have the resources to get home.


We put him in the car to embark on a journey from Baltimore, Maryland to the greyhound bus station in Washington DC. We had an hour and half conversation on our journey and this man was just as charismatic and good natured as my friend described as being.


February 16, 2009 was one of the best days of my life because my friend and I embarked upon a journey with an uncertain ending and at the end of the day I can truly say we found a needle in a hay stack.