When you wanna say no moment...

If you got the May 1st edition of “The Link" by email last Thursday, you saw that I had a phone call from a woman that needed help moving her hospital beds and electric wheelchair, and she needed it done by the weekend due to having to get out of her apartment. A few of you responded to help me out on Saturday morning in which I say THANK YOU and for Dennis that showed up with his trailer to help. We got her those things moved without a problem and I was then off to work on the roofing project that First Assembly was doing.

My “when you wanna say no" moment came on Sunday night at 9pm. The NLFW phone number comes to a cell phone that I carry around with me and I typically don’t answer on the weekend just because it’s the weekend and I don’t take calls on weekends. Well, my phone rings at 9pm last night and I don’t answer of course, so I let it go to voice mail. I listen to the voice mail because let’s be honest, I can’t not know what the message was for.

The message was from the same woman that we helped move on Saturday morning distraught by the fact that her son left her stranded in her apartment with one more load of stuff and her animals with no way to get to her new place. I listen to the message and think to myself that I don’t want to call her back and I don’t really want to help this late on Sunday, but I couldn’t let it go. So, I call her back to see how urgent it is and did her son really leave her stranded. He definitely left her stranded and wasn’t coming back to get her and she had nowhere to sleep in her apartment and had to have the key turned in by the morning. CRISIS MOMENT!!!!

God has blessed me with some great friends that I could call at 9:15pm, drop what they were doing, and come to not only this woman’s rescue, but my rescue. Both of these guys blessed me in more ways than they could imagine by their willingness to serve without a “wanna say no" moment. They responded far better than I did to the call. 

"I wanna say no" moments are real and we all face them, especially at 9pm on Sunday night knowing it’s going to be a late night and something you really feel you shouldn’t have to do. These are the moments when God is waiting to see how you will respond. In these moments God reveals what you’ve been asking Him to reveal to you. 

To you that helped.. Thank you!  For the rest of you, if you find yourself in a crisis mode and you need help to help someone else, you can contact me and I’ll do my best to help or advocate on your behalf to get you the help. 

Andrew Hoffman
I believe that social innovation & the power of a healthy neighborhood can transform communities. I'm the husband of Michelle, father to Avery and the soon to be twin Hoffman Boys. We're the H-Train. We live in a historic neighborhood in South Central Fort Wayne. My day job is the Executive Director of NeighborLink Fort Wayne. Photography has quickly become my go to creative outlet that allows me to capture the moments of life that we hold onto dearly for my family and for others.
andrew-hoffman.com
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