April 23rd, 2008 by Matthew Triggs

(I wrote this three years ago on my old blog, but It’s such a great story, I thought I would re-post it here)

The other night I was having a hard time sleeping so I went out for a random late night drive on my borrowed motorcycle. I find driving at night relaxing as the traffic is light and it’s a nice way to just be alone and away from the chaos.  I can conceal my white skin and blond hair with my jacket and helmet.  Nobody stares at me and nobody yells “Hey Joe, where are you going?” The only stares I get are the people admiring the borrowed 1980 Yamaha Maxim 400 that I am driving.

After driving for a while, I found myself driving on R. Castillo Street which I seldom drive on.  The church I attend is on that street.  Other than that, I had no reason to be there at that time.

Suddenly, there was a woman staggering around in the middle of the road! She was violently crying, and covering her face.  I had to swerve around her to avoid colliding with her! I quickly turned the bike around to coax her off the road. I also did this to turn my headlight in the face of any oncoming traffic so she wouldn’t be hit in the darkness.

I slowly herded her to the left off the road while driving on the wrong side of the road.

After she was on the sidewalk, I quickly accelerated and parked my bike on a sidewalk ramp with the kickstand uphill which later proved to be a bad idea.  I quickly put my helmet on my right mirror and ran back to her and grabbed her.

By this time, she was still crying and fighting me to go back into the street!  I sat her down on the sidewalk and firmly held onto her. As she struggled with me, I tried to calm her down and ask her what was happening. The stench of alcohol reeked from her breath as she spoke some hysterical, unintelligible words in Cebuano.

She just kept crying and crying as a crowd of pedestrians began to gather.  It must have been quite a sight to see a foreigner hugging and holding a crying, drunk Filipina woman against her will by the roadside.

I shouted to all the bystanders, “I’m going to pray now, so you can pray with me or leave!”  A few of them left as I started shouting out my prayer, “I REBUKE THE SPIRIT OF SUICIDE IN THE NAME OF JESUS! I REBUKE THE SPIRIT OF ALCOHOLISM, AND I PRAY THAT YOU WOULD HEAL THIS WOMAN JESUS OF WHATEVER IS WRONG WITH HER, NOW!”  She went from fighting me to embracing me, still violently crying.

She seemed to be calming down a bit, when one of the teenage bystanders leaned on the motorcycle sending it pummeling over on its side, smashing the mirror and nearly snapping the rear turn signal off.  Also, my beautiful black helmet received a nice big scratch on it as it skidded down the street.

I let go of the woman to check on my bike because the woman appeared to be calm and regaining her sanity.

While I checked on the bike, she ran back into the street in front of a big container truck!

Thankfully, a nearby lesbian woman and I ran out into the street and saved her life for the second time.

So here I am, a radical Pentecostal minister, teaming up with a lesbian to save a crazy drunken woman in the middle of a dark street in the middle of the night!  I’m thinking about all the so-called “Christian” Catholic Filipino people who drove by her leaving her to die without helping her, and here are a lesbian and a foreigner being the good Samaritans.

Finally, to my relief, a police vehicle started coming down the street with its lights blazing.  I ran out into the street to flag it down as it blew by me without stopping. Thankfully, a few minutes later another one came to the scene, and they helped restrain her and take her home.  The same police officers came back a few minutes later to thank me and tell me they successfully took her home, as I was picking up the bike and the mirror off the ride of the road.

I wish I could say that I led her to Jesus or that she was delivered from her demons.  I can’t say that any of those things happened, but I can say that, thankfully, I was on that road at that time or she probably would have died and gone into eternity without Jesus.

If your life is boring, the next time you can’t sleep maybe you should go for a midnight drive.  You never know what might happen.