Life and Love

The value of sidewalk counseling--literally measured in lives saved.  Excerpts:

...After a 10-year hiatus born of frustration and too many encounters with ugliness, Yanta decided in January of 2011 to return to sidewalk counseling. She prayed, "Okay Lord, I have a better perspective now, and I'm going to go back out there for you now—I'm not expecting warm fuzzies like I did years ago, because I know I'm not going to get them—but I want to do this for you."

Going out to the sidewalk on a brutally cold day, bundled up against the snow, she felt that ugliness return. She thought, "Oh man, I didn't know I would feel this way again, I hate this place—I don't want to be here! Lord, you are going to have to help me, because anything that comes out of my mouth is going to be wrong, and I feel totally inept. Empty me out, and fill me up so that anyone who drives in here will see you—not me, and everything will be okay."

As the first couple drove up she felt, as she described it, a "whoosh of joy" filling her up that she could only explain as being from the Lord. She smiled at them, and felt truly happy to see them. Yanta signaled for them to roll down their window, and then handed the driver—the boyfriend—a model of a 12-week old fetus. He passed it to his girlfriend, who gasped: her baby was twelve weeks along.

At that point, Yanta introduced to the audience this young woman and her sweet little 3-month-old daughter...