Working with prostitutes led our team to working with the gay community because we wanted to start working with men who are prostitutes. There is a huge population of men in Dallas who are prostitutes. And there is a huge population of men who are transvestites and who are prostitutes, and we want to love them.
Our journey led us to meeting some great people and we have gained many great gay friends. We started out wanting to learn about the gay community and we felt God was leading us to a hospice house for men who were dying of AIDS, which led us to mostly working with men with AIDS. One of the sad realities of this place is that most of these men had nobody to care for them family wise. Most of these men had been rejected by their families, even at their death. It was so sad.
Why this place? I was asking this same question. Seemed pretty extreme. But here is what I believe. I believe God wanted to teach me how to love a gay person and not make them my project. So, he led me to this place to serve and love these men. I also think he wanted to knock out every inch of prejudice or homophobia that may have been in me; whether I thought I had some or not.
I am not going to lie. This was tough for me. This was a hospice house. These were people on their death-bed. It was not pretty. It smelled. Human beings were reduced to almost skeletons. There were needles, IVs, bed pans, etc.. It was not a place that I was used to at all. But God wanted us to love. He wanted us to get into people’s pain and so we did. We would love these men. We would hug them and serve them. We would pray for them. How did offering prayer go? We were never turned down! When we prayed for people, they felt loved, and there were also tears at times. To me, I really do think that most of these men had not felt worthy of being prayed for, and that is a big reason the tears came.
The hardest part for me was when our new friends would die. We would visit them week after week, multiple days a week, and one day we would show up and they would be gone. Just like that. This happened so many times. It never got easier. It was very emotional. There was an emotional cost to going and making friends there. It was tough.
We went there for many months, and I can tell you that all of the walls or prejudices that I had were destroyed. God had taught me to love, and these experiences had led me to fully embrace the gay community. We continue to work with them.
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