Creeped out! And...

Before we had our third child, my older girls and I were very active in community service. One of the things we did was work for the local homeschool medical clinic. I helped people fill out paperwork and my girls cleaned the toys after all the appointments.

It was an interesting task for us as we learned to appreciate people from very different lifestyles and backgrounds and worldviews. We still are very sensitive to the needs of those who seem to have the least amount of resources or skills to help themselves.

But today... things hit a little too close for comfort and I'm feeling "creeped out" as one of my daughters put it.

We discovered that there's been a homeless person living in one of our shed in our backyard. This shed is about 20 feet from our house. Unfortunately, according to the policeman who visited, we gave the homeless person an open invitation by not fixing our fence. (Our 6 foot wooden privacy fence had two sections blown out during a winter storm and we haven't pressed the landlord to fix it, nor have we tried to fix it ourselves.)

The bad part of all this is that my husband's $400 mountain bike was stolen. The other bikes (childrens and very small adult) were still there. We discovered this today because our youngest daughter wanted to go on a bike ride today and so hubby headed out to the shed to get the bikes out.

There were clothes left in the shed along with a small amount of trash and a bag of human excrement. The policeman said they normally do that (poop in a bag) and take it with them throwing it in a trash bin somewhere and that this person must have forgotten. He also said he was quite certain the homeless person would be back unless we changed things - like fixing the fence, and putting a lock on the shed.

The policeman said if we wanted, they've had lots of success in catching the homeless as they "squat" and that we could just watch and then call them once they're in the shed. That would mean one of us would have to watch after it got dark. He said it's been his experience that the homeless people don't return because trespassing puts them in jail.

We cannot figure out why our dogs aren't barking at this -- or have they been and we've been thinking it's the foxes that run through our back yard and shushing the dogs without looking (something we've done countless times!)

At this point, we don't know what we're going to do. Pray for us that we might make the right decision.