Sitting in Silence

I Needed a Friend

I’ve told many of you this, but I figure it doesn’t hurt to share it again. Keep in mind that this was happening all while I was pastoring here and in seminary.

A few months ago my mother was sent to prison. While she was there I was supposed to handle all of her finances, assets and take care of her home. Right before she was sentenced she ended up getting someone to rent a room in the house. Since I was handling the finances and her stuff I had to make sure this person was paying his rent and also not destroying her house.

As time went on my mother decided to evict this individual. I went down to the house one afternoon with Larissa to check on the house and see how things were going. The reason I went down was because one of her friends who also checked on the house found a bunch of weapons and drug paraphernalia. She didn’t call the police and I couldn’t without seeing it, so I drove to check it out.

I opened the door in the back of the house and found out that the door had been kicked in and the lock was broken. Inside on the floor were about 6 bowls of water and the cat and dog food bags lay open on the floor. The state of the house was nothing less than a disaster. There were no weapons, and the drugs must have been cleaned up, but ammunition laid everywhere. Since there was nothing illegal about ammunition I had to find something to get an investigation.

I looked around and ended up finding paraphernalia in a trash can in this person’s room. So, I called the police. I informed them of what I suspected and what I had found. They said that since it wasn’t an emergency they would be sending someone out when they could. So I hung up and got to work cleaning some things up and trying to restore the house to some order. As I was doing this I heard a car pull in to the drive way. I opened a blind to look, thinking it was the police, and saw a car…the tenant’s car. He and three of his friends sat in the car and stared at me, then flashed their guns.

I panicked a little, made Larissa sit in my mother’s room and locked that door, and thenI locked all of the doors to the house (even though the back door would just open with a gust of wind). At this moment the PSP (Pennsylvania State Police) called me back and I interrupted the officer and said “the tenant just arrived with three friends and they are armed”. He said “we are on the way” and hung up.

At this moment I sat there completely numb. I wasn’t sure what to think, how to feel, or what to do. Then I started thinking about how my life was in danger, and even worse how my fiance’s life was in danger too. At this point I began to pray. I prayed and prayed and finally had the urge to call a friend. I called one of my closest friends, another pastor, and quickly informed him of what was happening (he was familiar with my mother’s situation). I could hear him crying on the phone with me, and all he said was

I had received a call from one of my mom’s friends that the house had a bunch of weapons and drug paraphernalia