Story from the Patrols

About 1.00am as most pubs and bars should’ve been closing, we heard a radio call from a venue that none of us had heard of before. The radio call concerned a missing woman and gave a short description of her – friends were concerned for her safety. No one responded to the call to say they had seen her, so the team looked up the venue on Google Maps and we headed off to see if they could be of any help. When the street pastors arrived at the venue, they saw a young woman with a tear-stained face sitting outside. Her drunk boyfriend tried to explain why she was s distraught and the doorman filled in the details.
Her friend had disappeared about an hour and a half beforehand, leaving her handbag on the table. The doorman explained that she had had two panic attacks  and that no one had any idea of the whereabouts of her friend.
You can imagine what everyone was thinking might have happened to her. So the team explained the situation to the duty prayer pastor and asked her to pray for a miracle. Meanwhile, the patrol decided to look for the missing woman before the venue reported her missing to the police. After patrolling backstreets half way through the centre of town, one of the street pastors said, ‘it seemed like we were looking for a needle in a haystack.’ So the team stopped and prayed a short prayer, asking God to lead the street pastors to the missing woman. We made our way to the bus station – there were no buses at this hour, but there were taxis at the taxi rank.

The Street Pastors usually split the team when going through the bus station in order to cover more ground, but still keep each other in sight. One of the team had recently had a hip replacement and was walking slower than the others as they came in sight of the taxi rank. They saw a someone who matched the description of the missing woman being pushed into a taxi by a man. She began shouting, saying she didn’t want to get into the taxi. The team arrived at the taxi rank as the man was trying to head off. The street pastors asked the woman if she was all right. Incredibly, she said that she was okay and that the man was helping her – and not to worry. Even though the man headed off quickly when he saw the street pastors,
the team leader still felt uncomfortable with the situation, saying, ‘I don’t like this.’ So the team tried to catch up the man and woman. At this point, the couple ran straight into the other two Street Pastors who called out to her by her name. This time the woman let go of the man’s hand and we were able to confirm that she was the missing woman, by telling her where she had been and other details of her night out. The team leader then radioed the venue where the woman had gone missing and we arranged a meeting point for the woman to be reunited with her friends. Again, incredibly she then pleaded with the team not to get the man into trouble. The man, who was still standing with her, was getting more and more agitated and only left in a hurry when the doorman appeared. Shortly afterwards, two other people arrived from the woman’s group and there was a very emotional reunion. After the woman left with her friends, the doorman also thanked the street pastors for enabling him to go home!

Steve (Street Pastor)