‘She’ is not so different from me, really. Sure, our worlds are like night and day: one English living comfortably, the other Irish, living in hardship, taking drugs and waiting for the next punter to squirm into her life for a few horrendous moments.  But there is a chord that binds our hearts together…. writes Susan Sadler…We are both mothers. I recognized the look of fierce love in her eyes for her children that she is sadly unable to hold at this time..

‘He’ tells me he has never loved a woman…only men. I ask him if he loves Jacqui the worker from Hope Ministries who spends time with those make their living on Belfast’s streets.  He thinks carefully for a moment and says “yes”. “In what way?” I ask. Here is his moving answer…

“‘M’ is for the million things she gave me - ‘O’ means only that she’s growing old ‘T’ is for the tears she shed to save me - ‘H’ is for her heart of purest gold -’E’ is for her eyes with love-light shining -’R’ means right and right she’ll always be. Put them all together they spell MOTHER, a word that means the world to me.”

As we were leaving, a car pulled up on the opposite side of the road and I was beckoned over by a young woman.  She asked me what I had seen that night – darkness and Light was my response.  Darkness gathered some people up like a dark whirlwind sending them into the depths of despair, but Light can win out.

“What is your relationship on a scale of one to ten with Jesus ” I asked, she paused biting her lip, while the driver looked at me and said “yours is 10 out of 10 isn’t it?”…

”Yes it is” I said to him, my mind pondering over the things of the night. The girl said she started to feel a wonderful feeling coming over her. Right there and then she got out of the car in her pyjamas and got prayed for by the Hope volunteers.  Her sister got out of the car and asked her what was happening, to which she replied: “I never felt like this before.”  Her sister also said she wanted to be in relationship with Jesus. It was 2am on a cold Belfast street!