May 24, 2007

Tiffany works at a strip club


waiting tables, trying to make enough tips to get a place to stay for the night. Her fiance Chris is from Chicago and watches their 6 month old baby Christian while she works the night shift. They live in their car or wherever they can find a place to crash.

They walked past our house yesterday and needed a lot of help so we helped them. Tiffany and Christian came inside to get out of the heat while Rich and Chris fixed a flat tire on their car. Christian has terrible asthma that they were told to just "wait and see if he grows out of it". They just can't get any firm ground to stand on. Tiffany's mom died a year ago from a botched surgery and now her 11 year old brother is in custody of her crack-smoking dad. She wants to make enough money to get a place to live so she can get custody of her brother. Tiffany just turned 18.

She called me last night at 10:15 and without asking, asked if they could stay at our house for the night. I just couldn't bring myself to offer it to her. How much is too much? I wrestled with it for a good two hours. I prayed with her on the phone and stayed up looking for shelter information. They can't stay at the homeless shelter because it closes its doors at 7 pm and she works at the club from 7 to 3am or sometimes even 6am. On slow nights like last night, she'd only made $3 in as many hours and just didn't know what they were going to do.

She said she would call me today. I had a place for her to go but I never heard from her or Chris. They don't have a phone so, I just have to wait.

I don't know if they'll ever call us back. We know God put them in our path. I just keep hoping that I didn't ruin any future of helping them with turning them down last night.

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