Homeless Missionary
Kristin
eventually replied and said that she had gone to
that church, met and spoke
with
the pastor, who invited her up to the front during the Sunday service's announcements, explained to his congregation that she is a missionary who
recently
returned from Asia and found herself temporarily homeless as her housing
arrangement had fallen through. Could anyone in his congregation who has an
extra bedroom offer her shelter for a few nights?
Kristin dresses very conservatively and looks very presentable. She said there were about five hundred people in the pews. She said she stood there with the pastor for a while but not one hand went up. I had always wondered if my being with Kristin discouraged others from helping her: here was the answer. "Christians" weren't helping Kristin not because I was with her but because they just weren't interested in helping. "Church" to them is a place where they go to get some benefits, not a gathering of believers to serve God and others with their God-given gifts and resources. All those with an extra bed should have offered shelter even if their pastor had brought up and presented a homeless man. Kristin is a young woman and a returning missionary, yet nobody in a supposed body of five hundred "Christians" offered her shelter.
The pastor finally told her to sit back down and told the congregation that if nobody can house her, perhaps his church can take up an additional offering for her, passed the plate around, collected and gave her a couple of hundred dollars.
The pastor and his wife took Kristin to their home, where she slept for two nights and then used the $200 to buy a flight ticket to the city where she had parked our car in a long term airport parking lot before flying out to China. She flew there, found the car battery dead, and messaged me in a panic.
Her predicament was entirely her own doing, and this was just more of the chaos to which untreated borderline personality disorder leads. I felt sorry for her and almost flew over from southeast Asia to rescue her again, albeit without taking her back as my fiancée, and would have done it if she had apologized and shown repentance for her deceit, betrayal and bad decision.
Instead, she messaged me, "How dare you leave me in this country to take care of myself on my own!" She was again blaming me for her own bad decision, so I stayed put, prayed for her, and tried to give her guidance. Thankfully, the Lord provided a mechanic the next day who replaced the battery, but communication from her then stopped completely and my increasingly frantic messages asking about her safety and well-being went unanswered.