GATS ADDENDUM PERSONAL STORIES
SOS SAN FRANCISCO AND THE CASTRO STREET FAIR AND GAY PRIDE RAINBOW PARADE
The following accounts for a few ministry moments I had in 1982 during a San Francisco street outreach. The stories are taken from a book written by Don Beattie about SOS San Francisco. About two weeks after SOS, she again ran into Tom on the street and said, “Hi, Tom.”
At first, Tom looked at her blankly, but as he recognized her, his eyes lit up, and he said, “Hey! You’re the girl that saved me.’” He had given his life to Jesus and begun attending a church. He had also given up his homosexuality and asked Nadine to pray for his ex-lover. Dick Owen, pastor of Park Presidio Bible Church and president of San Francisco’s National Association of Evangelicals (N.A.E.) chapter, planned a door-to-door survey approach for the conservative Park Presidio area. The area was quiet at night, so the emphasis was on afternoon ministry. The team found people open.
The church had so lovingly housed, fed, and cared for the team that the team began praying for a special way to bless the church back. Finally, they decided what they would do.
Team leader Bill Bolin was asked to preach at the concert on Thursday night, which was also their regularly scheduled meeting. Did, but before starting, he said, “We’ve decided that we’d like to wash your feet after the meeting.”
Three people the team had invited went to the concert, and afterward, they were invited to join the team as they took the church members downstairs, filled pails and pans with warm water, girded themselves with towels, and began washing their feet.
If God needed just literature, we could all learn to fly planes and drop huge tract bombs on San Francisco. If God required churches, we could all tear down tenements and build more buildings. But what God needs, folks, is containers because He’s enough. Today at Union Square, Jesus was enough. Monday, Jesus will be enough. God doesn’t need some Gospel cliché because Jesus is enough. The dialogue you use with someone may not work on the next person.
To cleanse the wounds of the people you will meet, you need to be a vessel that pours out only Jesus … You see, the difference between having a camp meeting and a visitation from God is only to become vessels and let God press us in.
If God had said, ‘Do nothing all week but walk through the city praying, never saying anything,’ and if we had, God would have been glorified. We would be released. And who cares about results? What do you want to go home with? Nickels and noses? Stats? Sixteen notches on your Bible? Let’s go home this week with a sense that Jesus spoke to us and that it was Jesus that was poured out of us.”
On Saturday afternoon, Bill Bolin of San Francisco’s Teen Challenge covered several miles of San Francisco in his prayer walk, including Castro Street. There were signs advertising the Castro Street Fair everywhere. God spoke to him to return there the next day. Thus, Bill and his friend Terry Hatch ate lunch, prayed, and went to the Castro Street Fair after church.
At first, they just quietly walked around observing the people and booths, but after a while, they felt impressed to sit down and pray that God would use them as vessels and let God impress upon them what to do.
They sat on a curb, began looking around, and quietly prayed for the people they saw. Before long, a young man walked up next to Terry and asked, “What do you think of it?” Terry answered, “It’s alright. It’s different. You know, I’m a. Christian.” “Yeah, I know,” the man said. “I recognize your friend (Bill had been working stage security at the Union Square rally).”
As they began talking, the man said the gays were opposed to SOS because of its connection with the Moral Majority. Bill explained that SOS was not part of the Moral Majority and then could share the Gospel by explaining what SOS was about. They talked for five or ten minutes until the man decided he’d heard enough and walked off.
Bill and Terry then got up and approached a man dressed like a priest who was selling absolutions and little vials of ashes from a fire in which several people involved in sadomasochism had died. Bill and Terry watched him write a person’s name on one of the absolution slips and hand it to him. “Excuse me, sir,” Bill said, “but what is an absolution?” The man showed Bill an absolution slip. It stated that the person named on the slip was entitled to indulge in whatever pleasure they wanted to indulge in without feelings of guilt.
Bill didn’t know what real absolutions were other than that they related to the Catholic Church, so he asked, “Well, what were the real absolutions in the Catholic Church?” The man had been a Catholic, and he began explaining that “the real absolution happened when Jesus Christ came and died on the cross and shed His blood for our sins to forgive us for our sins” and that “if we just reach out and receive Him, He becomes our absolution and we’re not sinners anymore because we’ve been washed.”
“Whoa: Praise God:” Bill said to himself. “He’s witnessing to me!” As the man finished explaining absolution to Bill, his eyes bulged, his face blanched, and he shook his head as if wondering why he’d said that. “Well, you know, the reason I’m wondering is because I’m not a Catholic, and I knew absolutions had something to do with Catholicism, and I wondered what it is you’re selling because I’m a Pentecostal, and I’m just up here checking everything out.” “A Pentecostal?” the priest asked. “Yeah,” Bill answered, and he began to share with him about Jesus, but the priest walked back to his booth, put down his absolutions, and left.
Bill next saw a man dressed like a nun, who he thought was a guy from Teen Challenge the previous fall. The man was different, but Bill could tell him about Teen Challenge and, in the process, the Lord. Bill thought, “What are you doing, Lord?” He was surprised to find himself there speaking such bold words.
A little later, Bill noticed two more men dressed as nuns wearing little metal octagons with the letters “PAX” in the middle. He couldn’t remember what it meant, so he walked up and asked one of them, “Excuse me, sir, but what does that mean?” He answered, “Oh, it means ‘peace’ in Latin.”
Bill had a tattoo on the back of his hand from before he had met Jesus. It stood for Apollyon, a demon Bill had worshipped before his conversion. The other nun noticed it and asked, “Ooh, what does that mean?” “Well, actually, it stands for the devil; it stands for Satan.” “Ooohh!” the nun responded, half-stepping back and raising his hands in mock fear. “I know to watch out for you.” “But it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Bill added. “What?” the nun asked.
“It used to mean something,” Bill explained, “but it doesn’t anymore because it got washed in the blood. The blood covers it.” “What?” the nun repeated. “You see,” Bill explained, “I became a Christian, and when I did, the blood of Jesus flowed through me, and he forgave me and gave me a new life, something worth living for, and I don’t have to go out and mock God and curse Him anymore and play those old hate games I used to when I worshipped the devil and did all that crazy stuff.”
Soon, Bill and Terry began wandering around, handing out tracts. Two lesbian women took one, and one woman said, “Oh, you’re with SOS, right?” Terry said, “Yes.” Bill said, “Yeah, sort of, but I work with Teen Challenge, too.” “Teen Challenge?” she replied.
“Yeah, here in the City, but I’m working with SOS this week.” “You mean you’re part of the Moral Majority at Teen Challenge?” She sounded somewhat puzzled because Teen Challenge is known for working with gays, drug addicts, prostitutes, and such.
“Hey,” Bill replied, “we aren’t the Moral Majority. That’s political, and we’re not here for that.” “What did you think of the rally yesterday?” she asked. “I thought it was pretty good,” Bill answered. “Huh?” she said, surprised. “Why?” “Well, because where else are that many gay people going to get exposed to Jesus Christ and touched by the Lord on a Saturday Afternoon in San Francisco?” “I guess that’s true,” she said. “I never thought about it that way.”
“What did you think of it?” Bill asked her. “You want to know the truth?” she asked. “Yeah,” Bill replied. “You guys won.” “Well, what do you mean by that?” “Just that. You guys won.” “But, why?” “Well, because you just stood there peacefully with your hands raised, singing your songs, and doing what you wanted – you were perfectly within your rights. We came marching in on you and flipped you off and cussed at you and did all those different things; we marched during you, and we looked foolish. We were stupid. You know, you guys didn’t do anything. You didn’t retaliate. You didn’t say one bad word against us. Even afterward, the ones of you who stuck around were accepting us. I couldn’t believe it. You know, I had a wrong conception about it.”
“So do a lot of people,” Bill said. “Well, you know what you’re supposed to do?” she asked, still unconvinced. “You’re supposed to be our friends.” Bill replied, “Well, that’s what we’re here to do.” “You mean if I read this and I don’t accept what you’ve got to say in it, you’re not just going to shine me on and walk away?” “Of course not. That’s not what my Bible tells me to do. That’s not what Jesus said to do. He said to accept you and be your friend. That’s what He did.”
“Well, not too many people do that,” she said. “You know, I get turned off by all the hypocrisy I see in the people who condemn us.” “Well, we’re not here to condemn you. We’re just here to show you that there’s a better way. We’re not telling you that you must take it, but that it’s worthwhile because there’s something much better. It’s something that makes you happy and fulfills you. And that’s Jesus.
Anton LaVey Encounter
One story I love to tell revolves around an encounter between Anton LaVey and myself in 1980. LaVey was the founder of the church of satan in San Francisco. At the time, I was working for Teen Challenge. Part of my duties revolved around outreach and evangelism. This allowed me to be part of the leadership ministry of SOS San Francisco, a street ministry that began in 1979. I was assigned to be the staff liaison between Teen Challenge and SOS, giving me a seat on the Steering Committee for the first significant outreaches into San Francisco.
This story begins on a cold, foggy August evening in San Francisco on Polk Street. During that era, Polk Street was the central focal point for young male prostitutes, which made it a significant contributor to the difficulties and problems that were inherent within the San Francisco community. Polk Street was a great place to witness to young and old alike who had lost their way in life. Any young people who hung out on Polk were runaway children or what we would consider throwaway kids. They had nowhere to go or anyone to turn to who had their interests in mind, so they resorted to street prostitution and drug use as a survival mechanism.
On that evening, I oversaw two teams of approximately twenty people each who had been commissioned to go to Polk Street and witness to the people who gathered there by passing out Tracks (pamphlets about the faith), sharing testimonies, and reaching out as friends to hurting souls in general. However, things did not go as we had expected. A regular night of witnessing would be comprised of singing, prayer, and distributing written pamphlets or sheets that helped to incite conversation about faith and discussion about life. With San Francisco being an iconic fixture that represents sin and degradation on a grand scale, it was usually easy to assemble significant groups of people to invade the City by the Bay and blitz the city with our godly ‘propaganda.”
That night, we encountered significant resistance as several Satanists (sic) gathered to oppose us. Throughout the evening, they did everything they could to disrupt us and to try to prevent our team from accomplishing our goal, which was to share the love of Jesus with people whom we felt desperately needed to hear the story of Jesus and the message of grace that comprises the Gospel’s. Those who opposed us spat in our faces, attempted to rip up our Bibles, cursed at us, threw feces at us and condoms filled with urine, trying to chase us off the street. However, we would not be deterred as we had a goal in mind and a task to accomplish, as we believed we had a divine mandate. This proved to be accurate, as the following months saw a sharp increase in illness and death among the homosexual community in San Francisco as the yet-to-be-named pandemic of HIV/AIDS began to sweep through the city.
As the evening progressed, I became engaged in a conversation with two young men who turned out to be part of the group of Satanists (sic) who had gathered to oppose us. At that time, I had been a Christian for about three years and was able to spar with them significantly, as I understood many of their perspectives due to my pre-conversion experiences. I had grown up in what would be considered a non-Christian environment that made allowances for occult beliefs and practices. My friends and I began experimenting with drugs as pre-teens, and many of us followed very diverse spiritual paths that embraced most thoughts and beliefs, minus Christianity.
As the night wore on, I was making headway in my conversation with these young satanists (sic), which was frustrating them in some intense ways. Our conversation was soon interrupted as one of the men who participated in the outreach came running across the street, calling out my name. As he approached us, he paused and asked me to go across the street, indicating that an emergency had broken out and I needed to resolve the situation. He began to tell me that a gentleman whom we had led to the Lord the night before was about to get into a fistfight was someone who was accosting and confronting him over his faith. The new convert had been a bodybuilder, an experience that had developed during a stint in prison and his former time in the military. His conversion was spectacular, as he had been a barker at a Strip Club in the Broadway District of the city. I had engaged him in conversation on numerous occasions only to be rebuffed until that one evening when he fell to his knees on the street and cried out to Jesus for salvation. Upon getting up, he discarded his flyers and promptly left his job and lifestyle. He began living in a discipleship home, eventually went to a Bible College, and wound up in full-time ministry, but I digress.
As I began to head across the street, the two young satanists (sic) continued conversing with me and followed me to the other side; however, their tone changed. As we were crossing the street, they told me that they were happy to see that we were about to go back to the good old days of Rome where it would be Lions 10, Christians 0, obviously referring to the atrocities that happened in the Coliseums. As I approached the group where the confrontation was taking place, I saw three or four men holding back Michael, the young convert. Facing him was a tall gentleman who was broad-shouldered and who had a glaring feature that stood out: he was completely bald. As I drew closer to the crowd, I could also see a very distinct beard that the man wore. As I saw him in his profile, I immediately recognized him. It was Anton LaVey. At the time, many people knew what he looked like, especially if you had ever read, owned, or looked at the ‘satanic bible,’ a book he had penned. His photograph was a part of the back cover of the paperback version.
I put my hand on Michael’s chest. I asked him to calm down, explaining to him that it would not look good in the next day’s paper to see a headline splashed across the San Francisco Examiner stating that a rowdy group of Christians was arrested for rioting and fighting at Polk Street, the night before. With those instructions being given, I then sent Michael away with another team member to go get a soda and calm down. He agreed and left without getting physical with LaVey. By the time I met up with him the following morning, his demeanor had changed, and he was very repentant for almost losing control of his faculties the night before.
At that time, LaVey turned and faced me and began laughing. He then asked if I was the leader of the group, to which I replied yes. He then told me he was happy to see me, as he loved eating Christians for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, especially when they were leaders. This allusion to cannibalistic practices was intended to incite fear and prompt images of some of the more esoteric stories that surround paganism in society. He then began to release one of the vilest strings of vulgarities and challenges to my God that I had ever heard. As he continued his comments, I quietly gathered my thoughts. I did this by speaking in tongues below my breath. I started to ask my Father for strength and grace to confront this individual. I also asked God for wisdom and the ability to speak up properly when given the chance. Part of me wanted to call down fire from heaven, and part wanted to turn and leave. Part of me wished I wasn’t in the situation I had myself thrust into.
After what seemed like an eternity, a pause finely opened in the one-sided conversation. With a break finally occurring, I began to speak. What surprised me was that I began challenging this individual robustly and prophetically. I started to issue my challenge and denigrate Levey’s gods by routinely indicating their lack of power versus my Jesus and his infinite abilities. One of the ways I did this was by dragging my foot against the concrete and creating an imaginary line. I then proceeded to tell this profane individual that I knew he was very angry with me, as I had exposed him to a conversation about the blood of Jesus and the supernatural ability of the Holy Spirit. I told him that I knew that the spirits that inhabited him were very upset with the words I was speaking, and I knew that they would love to attack me. So, I challenged him to do so if he could. I told him my God was bigger and stronger than his and that I could prove it. I then threw out a test for him and the demons he served. I could see the anger on his face, and I could sense the demonic stirring in his heart. I told him that I knew he wanted to strike me. Then I said, “Go ahead if you can. But my God will stop you from hitting me.” Let me interject that I knew he possessed a black belt in numerous martial arts disciplines and that if he hit me, it would hurt a whole lot.
Praise God, my trust in Jesus’ surpassed my concern over taking a beating at the hand of this man that I faced. With that said, I told LaVey that he could try as hard as he wanted to hit me and that my Jesus would stop him every time. To my chagrin, LaVey took me up on my challenge. LaVey tried to hit me. He drew his arm back and thrust it forward with a clenched fist. As his fist rapidly moved toward my face, it stopped mid-air and froze, much to his dismay. He then repeated the process. I told them that he could not hit me and that he also could not cross the imaginary line that I drew. He then tried to step across, only to freeze in his tracks. At that moment, his face began to change. Previously, the veins were sticking out in his neck, and he had a head. His color had turned to a purplish hue, his eyes were glowing with anger as they narrowed to tiny slits, and he could barely control himself. All this changed as his face began to flush. His eyes became huge as he took a step backward. Anger began to be transformed into fear. The vivid colors that had given him differing hues faded to an ashen discoloration.
He quickly turned and moved toward a light post close to where we were having this encounter. Grabbing it with both hands, he began to bang his head against it, screaming at the top of his lungs in demonic (Enochian) language. Due to some of the areas I had studied in my youth, I knew what he was attempting to do. He was trying to dislodge the words that he had heard me speak, knocking them out of his head and out of his spirit, which is a common occultist practice when a practitioner of the dark arts is confronted with words or thoughts they do not remember or to allow to have any power over them. They believe in the power of words and their influence on their ability to inhibit or release their energy. I promptly followed him and told him that the words I spoke to him were so strong and contained so much power that the harder he hit his head, the deeper they would go in and that these words would never depart from his mind and spirit.
With that being said, I challenged him to find real power. I told him I knew about his quest for power and influence in the spiritual world and that he had influenced my life before my conversion. I showed him a tattoo I still had on my left hand, which was the sign of Apollon, the god of destruction. Earlier in our conversation, I had indicated that one of the signs of his god’s impotence was demonstrated in their inability to kill me, as I had crossed over to the opposite side of spirituality in a profound way when I became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I told him that in his quest for power, he’d been deceived, and if he wanted true power, he would have to bend his knee to the Lord whom I served and whose power stopped him at every turn on this fateful evening. With that, he began to run up the street toward a corner. Upon hitting the intersection, he turned left and ran full speed, only to disappear into the night. The last time I saw his face, he looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. I then turned to the two young Satanists’ (sic) who witnessed this event and said to them: “I guess tonight it’s Christians 1 Lions 0. Are you next?” They followed their leader and disappeared into the night. It was a powerful demonstration of the supremacy of Jesus over the powers of darkness, and it gave me an Elijah-type power encounter. Although this didn’t happen on Mt. Carmel, it did happen on Polk Street in the heart of San Francisco.
San Francisco and 16th & Mission
San Francisco was a fantastic place to be discipled. It was rife with possibilities for significant encounters with God as you ministered in the streets. One such occasion happened as I was preparing to leave San Francisco for Santa Cruz and Bethany College. One of my duties as the Outreach Coordinator for Teen Challenge was also one of my great joys. I would take a group of men out to the streets to conduct street evangelism ministry as part of my duties. On this one Saturday afternoon, I took the men to 16th and Mission, one of the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stations. It took us a couple of times around the block to finally find a spot to park, but we quickly took to the streets once we did. There was a hint of melancholy in the air, as this was to be my last excursion out in the streets of San Francisco with these men. Sunday would see me moving away to begin the pursuit of a bachelor’s degree from a Pentecostal College.
As we set up close to the street corner, a couple of us removed our guitars from their cases to establish an atmosphere of worship and invitation. Our standard procedure was to pray, set up an atmosphere of prayer, give what we dubbed popcorn testimonies and messages (short and quick), and then find people to pray with or for. This was a very effective way to touch numerous people rapidly. We developed it intentionally with Bus Stops in mind, as we only had a few minutes to touch their hearts and expose them to the power of the Gospel.
This one day started uneventful, with a few good responses, but that was about to change quickly. As one of the men shared his testimony, an observer suddenly began to spew a string of profanities and hurtling threats in our direction. The tone was extremely hostile, and the volley had a chilling effect on the people who were milling around and listening to us. The vitriolic barrage became more pronounced the longer we remained, causing me to consider taking the group elsewhere. I wouldn’t say I liked keeping them in a hostile environment, as some were just off the streets. I didn’t want to run the risk of an undue conflict. I should interject and tell you that one of the stipulations I had to agree to take the men out into this type of environment was the condition of discretion, as my superiors did not want Teen Challenge placed in a compromised position. They didn’t like the possibility of violence erupting while the men were sharing their faith, as they saw that as counterproductive. They knew what happened to me when Anton LaVey and I had a challenging encounter.
Just as I was thinking about packing it in, a couple of Beat Officers came on the scene and took the disruptive onlooker away from us. I occasionally would look over to see what was going on with this man, as he was intoxicated and possibly in a drug-induced rage, with us becoming the focal point of his wrath. The Police Officers had cuffed this man a couple of times, only to eventually let him go, with a warning to leave us alone.
The Officers finally let him out of their custody just as we contemplated leaving for home. As we began to pack in, one of the men in our group pointed out our antagonist and stated something to the effect that God should strike him down for his indiscreet comments that had been directed at us just a short time earlier. I need to point out the ironic nature of this comment, as this Elijah had been a Heroin Junkie, filling his veins with Smack only three months earlier. I pointed this out and told him that we should all be glad that God doesn’t deal with any of us that way and that his grace is more than sufficient for the worst of us.
The man who had become so vile toward us had gone over to a wall at the outskirts of the Station’s perimeter and sat down next to an assortment of troubled people. Before we left for the Van, some guys approached me about using the Restroom at the BART entrance. I consented to their request and used the break to go over to where the man yelling at us earlier was sitting to try and draw him into a conversation. I had a dual reason for this: on the one hand, I wanted to help the men see grace enacted, and on the other hand, I knew that anyone who acted as he did must have some significant hurt that prompted him to react toward the Gospel in the way he had. As the men who needed the toilet facilities disappeared into the abyss that descended to the station, I sat down to the immediate right of the man with a foul mouth. He growled at me initially but then resigned himself to my presence as I told him I wanted to ensure he was OK.
He then proceeded to tell me about his life. As it turned out, he had just been paroled from State Prison days earlier and was in a rage concerning the events he faced when he went to see his girlfriend unannounced. I had told him who we were and how we routinely dealt with men like him, helping people in crisis. He told me that when he knocked on his girlfriend’s door, he was surprised to see her open the door with a baby in her arms and his best friend in the background. He had served a two-and-one-half-year stint, which meant he couldn’t possibly be the father of this child. He had maintained contact with her through correspondence, but she had never physically visited him while he served his time of incarceration. He explained to me that he had thought this lack of visitation was due to financial pressures, which isn’t uncommon when someone is serving time in prison. As it turned out, his former best friend had begun living with his woman and eventually impregnating her with his child.
No one ever bothered talking about these events until that surprise visit, thus triggering his drug and alcohol binge and the subsequent enraged outburst of emotions. The Police Officers had a measure of compassion toward him upon hearing his story, although they held him at bay to protect us from his wrath. By this time, he was beginning to see the effects of his artificial stimulants wearing off, and he was much more approachable. By this time in the conversation, the men had returned from using the toilet and told me they were ready to leave. I then asked the young man if I could pray for him before we left. He had apologized for his erratic behavior and outburst of profanities, for which I promptly forgave him and offered to put him up at Teen Challenge if he needed emergency shelter. He accepted my offer of prayer, and I gently placed my hand on his shoulder and began to pray for him.
I was startled to hear what I perceived as the voice of the Lord speaking to my heart. His words were to the effect of: “Start fighting; you’re in a war.” I immediately knew what He meant as the man began twitching and growling, and his face contorted uncontrollably. All of this was accompanied by his eyes rolling back into his head and his profuse mouth foaming. If this wasn’t enough, a series of alternative voices began manifesting as he attempted to speak to me. It’s true; I was in a war battling against demonic forces that had set up residency in this man.
I cast out various spirits over the next hour to forty-five minutes. As one was excised, another surfaced, thus creating a new battle with a crowd of people who became observers growing as the event continued to escalate. At one point, a broken-down prostitute was sitting next to me, with a Wino next to her on the other side. The two began to talk about the situation I was involved in. The prostitute asked the wino about what I was doing to the man who was during an impromptu deliverance time of ministry. The wino turned to her and said: “Don’t you know? God and the devil are fighting, and God is winning (is that cool, or what?).” Eventually, some of the men came over to ask for permission to go and use the toilet again. I told them no, as I needed them to help me pray for this man. I was promptly told they didn’t want to lay hands on him, probably out of a misguided fear of something jumping off and infecting them. I then asked them to lay hands on me and pray for me as I engaged the enemy. This they could do. As they began laying hands on me, the most amazing thing happened.
This man, who had been twitching and manifesting in a very evil way, jolted straight, threw his head back with his face pointed toward the sky, his eyes returned to normal, and he stopped the foaming thing. Then he blew my theology right out the back door. With tears streaming down his face, he began speaking in tongues and praising God fervently. This outburst of language that was anything but foul lasted about twenty minutes. I was a little mystified because I could not lead him in a prayer of salvation. Finally, he calmed down and told the rest of the story with a new demeanor and facial expression.
When he was much younger, he had attended a series of revival meetings with Victory Outreach. During those meetings, he opened his life and heart to Jesus, accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He began attending regularly, only to grow discouraged, as he put it, since he had never ‘felt’ God’s presence, which can be a high value in most Pentecostal venues, of which Victory Outreach indeed identifies. This discrepancy made him doubt God’s reality and his friends’ testimonies at church. Eventually, he drifted away and became involved in gangs, drugs, and a whole host of criminal activities, which ultimately led to his latest about of incarceration.
It seems God had not given up on him, even if he had given up on God. I asked him if he realized what was happening to him. His response was: “Are you kidding?” “I may have doubted before, but I know God is real now.” “I’ll never leave Him or doubt His love for me again.” As the conversation ended, I gave him a card with all the Teen Challenge information on it and then proceeded to take the men back to the center for a final dinner with the men that I both loved and led.