Welcome back. You belong here.

A guy walked into church today to meet with the pastor on call, me. He told me a tale of racism, how here in Denver people don’t see many African Americans and that’s why we don’t help each other (him). He told me of his wife’s illness, and after 40mns he finally said “I need $314” I’m still not sure what he wanted the money for, something about that’s how much it would cost him for 3 bus passes to Texas. Wow. The kicker was when he said two guys from this church had helped him a few months ago

I asked for their names, he gave them to me, two leaders in the church. I called them, they both said “Nope, never heard of him”. I told the two guys the details this gentleman gave me, “They dropped off chicken, salad and $150 bucks cash”, they said “Nope, never heard of him”

At that point I should have said, please leave. Instead he kept pushing, I kept backpedaling, wishing I was buff and 7ft tall, maybe that’d scare him off. Instead he got $50 out of it. I hated the whole process, but that’s the best I could do. I know what I should have done, but I’m not the type to say “leave or I’ll call the cops”.

I feel stupid, robbed, conned even though I knew in the first 5mns this was a scam. I’ve alerted our team of this guys description and story and told them to never let this guy in the church again.

These kind of things sure put a damper on “helping the poor” don’t it. But you have to learn from it and keep going. For every bad apple, there are 10 people with legitimate needs.

Have a great day.

Into the future,

davidT