Downtown San Diego Homeless Stories - Meet Shane and Stephen

What an amazing Monday night feeding the homeless on the streets of downtown San Diego. We heard several incredible stores from people on the streets tonight. Here’s two:

Meet San Diego Homeless Man – Shane

Shane came to us hungry and wanting prayer for his pregnant wife. (See the photo of Shane and Anne below.) After talking to Streets of Hope San Diego volunteer, Anita, Shane told an incredible story of his pain over the last several years from living on the streets of San Diego with cancer and Fibromyalgia. If being on the streets isn’t hard enough, it’s even harder with fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, and sleep.

Anita listened to Shane and offered to pray for him to be healed. Shane explained how he hasn’t been able to feel anything on his right side. So, with Shane’s permission, Anita laid her hands on Shane’s leg and prayed for him to be 100% healed. What happened next is amazing. Shane said he felt something. For the first time in 5 years he could feel on the right side of his lower body. In his excitement Shane took off his right shoe and his sock. When his bare foot hit the sidewalk he shouted out, “I can feel the cold concrete!” He began to dance around. It was incredible. Next the tears came. The group formed a circle to listen to Shane tell an incredible story of being homeless and pregnant on the streets of San Diego.

As a final blessing to Shane, another Streets of Hope San Diego volunteer, Anne, offered to buy Shane’s pregnant wife some prenatal vitamins. Shane was so grateful. He promised to come back next week for our Easter Special Homeless Event.

UPDATE: 3/28/2016 – At our special Easter Homeless Event, Shane, and his pregnant wife Jane, showed up and had a great time connecting with the Streets of Hope San Diego volunteers. Shane confirmed that his leg is still healed and he still has feeling! Wow! Click here to read the full Easter story and be sure to scroll down the page to view the Easter homeless photos, including the ones of Shane, Jane and the baby!

Meet San Diego Homeless Man – Stephen

We met Stephen near the Public Storage block in downtown San Diego. (Many homeless put their personal belongings in a storage unit in the day time and pull them out at night to sleep.) Stephen had been sleeping underneath a few blankets. When we approach a homeless person either sleeping or in a tent, we always respectfully ask if they would like one of the bags of food or homeless care packages we pass out. If they don’t answer or say no, we keep walking, but many times they eagerly want what we have. When we asked homeless man Stephen, he sat up and was excited to get one of our food bags.

Immediately we could see that Stephen had lost an eye. His left eye had been stitched closed. (You can see him and the stitched eye in the photo.) He told his he lost the eye on the street from a fight. In an argument with another homeless man, he had been struck in the eye with a stick. You could feel his sorrow about it as he told the story. It was a hard story to hear. We told him we were sorry for the loss of his eye and he asked if we could pray for him.

The streets of San Diego are full of stories of the homeless like Stephen and Shane. From fights and robbery to blindness and pain, we have come across so many painful homeless people on the Streets. Please come join us every Monday night and help us feed and serve San Diego’s most needful residents.