Truffles and Tough Guys

On Friday night a small group of HPC volunteers loaded up the truck with chocolate truffles, Easter buckets and long-stemmed roses. We were preparing for Midnight Outreach: an outreach designed to touch the lives of men and women trapped in lifestyles of drugs, darkness and the sex-trade. The goal of Midnight is to remind these people that God knows where they’re at and that He loves them anyway.

Our first stop was Kittens, a ‘gentlemen’s club’ on Airline. (I used that term loosely). Almost every holiday we visit this club, decorate the ladies’ dressing room and give them a small gift. As we were putting out the candy a stripper walked up to a volunteer and asked if she could buy and Easter bucket. The volunteer told her it was a free gift; that she didn’t have to pay for it. Then the dancer asked who we were, so the volunteer proceeded to tell her we were with Healing Place Church. The woman immediately put her hands over her bare chest and said, “I can’t be talking to a church lady nekkid”. The volunteer smiled and assured her that she didn’t care. As this conversation was going on a man walked into the room and asked what we were doing. We explained who we were and what we were doing. He told us to leave. As it turned out, the owner of the bar was not there, so his brother felt the need to kick us out. No problem, we just left the gifts for the girls, thanked them and walked out.

In the parking lot we met a friendly bouncer who goes to Healing Place and told us that he loved it there. He asked us to pray for the owner and his brother, explaining that they were both Satanists. We told him we would pray and thanked him for the info. The bouncer also told us that another guy that had worked there got saved a while ago. He said the guy got ‘really saved…like quit his job here and everything’. How cool is that?

So, after being turfed from our first club we immediately headed down the street to our next stop. This place is always happy to see us. They let us in and told us to decorate the room and leave the gifts. As we were leaving one of the dancers stopped us to ask what we were doing. We explained that we were with Healing Place Church and that we just wanted to bless them for Easter. She immediately turned around and took off her shirt to show us the cross she had tattooed on her back. It was great.

We went to two more clubs, two Hooters locations and finished up at IHOP on Seigen. We had a few roses left so we blessed the female staff and customers with roses and handed out flyers about our Easter services. Everyone was a little surprised to see a church group out at midnight, but they seemed to appreciate the visit.

In a little under three hours we handed out ninety-six roses, forty Easter buckets and several cases of truffles. We talked to strippers, Satanists, bouncers and waitresses. We got to remind them that God loves them exactly where they’re at, and that He loves them too much to leave them there. I love my church! All glory to God.