Sandra Lee called our church office on Wednesday morning from Seton Hospital -  Hays. The night before she had slept on the ground in back of the local Lowes and had nowhere to go. When I went to pick her and her friend up I was shocked to see that she was in a wheelchair – she had no money, no bags, just her chair. Sandra’s friend and I loaded Sandra into the car, put her wheelchair in the back and began to make our way south to a local motel where our church occasionally provides a room for those in need. As we drove, Sandra began to tell her story.

 

Sandra had been physically and sexually abused by her father until she was 13 years old. When she finally got up enough courage to tell her mother, her mother kicked her out of her house. She has never been home since. Life on the road was difficult for Sandra, on one occasion she told a boyfriend who was beating her that she was going to leave him. The next time they were in the car together he said, “Have you ever heard the story of Romeo and Juliet? Well that’s what is going to happen to you and me.” With that, he stepped on the gas and drove the car they were in directly through a brick wall. The car rolled several times. When Sandra regained consciousness she was horrified to find that a piece of rebar from the wall had passed through her leg, shattering her knee, metal from the car door had sliced through her back,  and her head had smashed through a window. The accident left Sandra in a wheelchair, with limited use of her right arm, and some brain damage.

 

Sandra’s hard life became even harder in the days after the accident. Eventually, Sandra got a job with a traveling carnival calling kids to come and play the “floating duck game,” which she was able to run from her chair. For years she traveled from state to state. It wasn’t much, but at least she had a place to sleep and food to eat – that is until recently. The carnival for which she worked has fallen on hard times as of late, and so, she and about 19 of her co-workers were unceremoniously “dumped” in Austin. She was left with no job, no money, and nowhere to go. At night she would roll her wheelchair under an overpass to sleep. It was under an overpass that Sandra was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted by a homeless man one night. She was taken to the hospital and then released back to the streets by an overburdened hospital system.  When I met Sandra, she was on her way to try to get to her friend’s mother’s house in California. She said she was not afraid - she was a Christian and God would take care of her. As she, her friend, and I rode to the room the church was providing, she sang a song of thanks to God.

 

When we reached the motel we got Sandra out of the car and unloaded some groceries I had brought from the food pantry of the church. Upon entering the third-rate room she began to weep. “How beautiful, how beautiful, how beautiful,” she repeated as she stared at the sparse furnishings. After Sandra was settled in her room, I left for a time and returned later with some clothes from our church’s clothes closet ministry. When I handed her the clothes she was once again moved to tears. After thanking me once more she said that she had found a Bible tract in her room and read it. “It was God’s love letter to me today,” she said. Before I left, I prayed for God’s protection for her and her friend.   When she prayed, she asked God’s to bless our church and thanked Him for the “angels” who had helped her.

 

Thanks to you and your faithful giving, our church was able to help Sandra with a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear and someone to pray with her.   Thanks to you, our church was able to be used of God to be the answer to Sandra’s prayer on that day.   Every time you give to First Baptist Church of Kyle, a portion goes to help people like Sandra – one of God’s road-weary children just trying to make it home.