William and Jean lived in a container at the back of McDonalds at Kew Park shopping complex in Southport. The container was used for putting rubbish in. They arrived with us dripping with rain. Both were heroin addicts in their mid-thirties, and desperate for somewhere to live.
We had a small, one-bedroom flat at the back of one of our properties on the ground floor. We cleaned and tidied it, furnished it and put them in. Jean was a kind-hearted woman and we soon discovered that she made way for any waifs and strays that we had not come across. Our soup kitchen became a regular source of sustenance for them and we had opportunity to talk to them about their problems and about God's love for them.
Jean was soft towards the gospel, and soon managed to get on to a daily prescription of methadone. She pleaded with us to move her out of the area and to enquire whether she could have fourteen daily prescriptions from the drug centre to maintain her medication. Unfortunately this was turned down.
Ten days later we arrived at the property where she was living to find it was cordoned off by the police, her body had been found hidden in the sand dunes just off the main beach. How sad we all were - we felt so close and yet so far away. A local minister was asked to take the funeral service and he phoned me to ask if I would be attending. He then spoke some of the most wonderful words one could ever hear. The Sunday before her death he had seen her sitting on a bench in the centre of town and stopped to talk to her. She had said to him. "I have asked Christ into my life, and you were right, it really does make a difference."
Read some of their stories as recounted by Pastor Pete Cunningham, director of Green Pastures.