Have you ever bumped into a total stranger and walked away completely changed?
Andrea was her name, and her face will be forever etched in my mind. Her long red curly tresses tried desperately to hide the dark black circles that highlighted her sunken eyes. Her slight frame left uncovered, perishing relentlessly on a cold British night.
Andrea was a Prostitute out selling her body to any lustful stranger that offered her a $10 trick. I was young, naive and clueless with no idea that my exciting little adventure would fast become a collision with destiny.
My Hollywood-infused image of Prostitution was destroyed that night when I took my first ever step into a dark world that I knew nothing about. Andrea just took one look at me and laughed a haunting laugh that said: ‘You so are not from this world hunny.’
My innocence radiated from every part of my being.
Although Andrea was rattling from the withdrawals of Heroin, she was still incredibly sharp, she had read my mail in a split second.
In her attempt to gain amusement from my shocked expression she shuffles up carefully to me and says “You have a pretty face, fancy some work? And then she laughed at me. This girl was as hard as nails, and I had no clue how I was ever going to relate to girls like Andrea?
And then it happened, that life-defining moment when destiny called.
This hard and bolshy woman, so desperate for her regular heroin fix, had come out that night and left at home, her brand new baby girl, who was just two days old.
It was at that moment that I knew I was a fraud to my faith if I didn’t take them a Saviour and I must dedicate my life to girls like Andrea for the sake of the future generations to follow.
Life would never be the same again. I am forever grateful for that Stranger Encounter.