What’s In The Bag
Linked from How I Got My Heart of Stone
College Creek Terrace in Annapolis, MD
As an LDS missionary, you tend to stand out. Clean-cut guys walking/biking around in ties and suits with black name tags. Often we were the only white people around on predominantly black streets.
I spent lots of time in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Baltimore & Anne Arundel Counties. We’d be talking to guys about Jesus and in the middle of us talking they’d be slanging drugs. And it was amazing to me how the whole neighborhood propped up the activity. Occasionally you’d hear a shout of “Po’ Po’” from the end of the street and people would scatter as a patrol car rounded the corner. The first time I saw that was on Clay Street in Annapolis.
In fact, Clay Street is in the map you see to the right and is exactly where I had a pretty interesting experience. We had just finished reading the scriptures in an apartment by the playground in the middle of the two buildings. She was a mother, a grandmother & a great-grandmother at no more than 60. As we walked out to the street where we parked, a young guy came up to us and looked like he was sizing us up. It was pretty rare, but missionaries had been mugged a few times when I was there.
He turned to us and asked, “What’s in the bag?”
Honestly, the only thing I had in my bag was free King James Version Bibles that we handed out. So, kind of stupidly I replied, “Bibles. You want one?”
He stopped, thought for a second and said, “Yeah…I do. I can always use some of the Word!”
He then walked us over to a group of his friends that were clearly drunk, and smoking pot right there on the street. There were some big guys in the crowd that were giving us some sideways looks. Our friend turned to his buddies and said, “See these guys? Don’t nobody mess with them! They’re my boys!”
We talked to our friend a few more times, when he showed up for appointments we made. He told us he felt like we were his street preachers coming to him. Eventually, I was transferred to a new area and never heard from him again.
It was sad to see how these kids got involved in drugs & crime. They just couldn’t see any other way to live, it simply was beyond their comprehension. Occasionally, you met someone who wanted to get ahead, I knew a few that got into college and made it out of that trap, one that actually played football for BYU. Too often, though, you would see them caught in a cycle their family had been in for generations. Young girls getting pregnant and leaving the grandparents or great-grandparents to raise their kids. Young boys getting caught up in the “easy money” of drugs and end in and out of jail throughout their lives.
I came to care about these people. I got to know their struggles and their pain. I thought about them everyday. I worried about them. I prayed for them. Whenever I could I’d help them break the addictions and problems they had. Serving them for so long, they change in your eyes. I honestly got to the point were I viewed everyone as a child of God. I still pray that they will be able to lift themselves out of the rut they are in and move on to much freer and happier lives.
