“This humanitarian work you do—is there some religious motivation? If it’s religious, I’m an atheist.” The old bum tugging at my arm looked more like a beast than a man. His shriveled body bore all the marks of extreme alcoholism, but his eyes were alert and pled with mine.

“I was once an atheist, too,” I told him.

The large public market in Buenos Aires where this took place is home to many stevedores and others who don’t have anywhere else to live. During the day, hundreds of street people comb through the garbage and vie for refuse from the produce stalls. It’s a pretty rough place. In the two years I’ve been going there for supplies for our volunteer work, I’ve gotten to know quite a few of the vendors and many of the regulars. This one wanted to talk. He said his name was Sucker.

For a street drunk, he turned out to be surprisingly well spoken and educated. Standing there in the market, for the next half hour the man told me his life story—all 64 years of it—including how his police-chief father had been assassinated by the Mafia before his eyes, and how he had then “gone loco” and been uncontrollably violent ever since. By the time he finished, tears were streaming down his face.

What could I say? I prayed silently for the right words. “Do you want to be delivered?” I asked.

“Delivered from what?”

“From your bitterness and fear.”

“No one can take that away!” Sucker protested.

“I know Someone who can,” I told him, “and I have a gift for you.”

He caught on immediately that I was talking about Jesus. “Do you know how hard it is for an atheist to receive that gift?” he groaned.

“I was an atheist too, remember. That’s why I know this will work for you.”

Sucker had no answer for that.

“Do you want to receive Jesus?” I asked outright.

When I opened my eyes, he looked like a different man!

For a long moment he stood perfectly still, staring at me. Then suddenly he exhaled and his arms fell open, as if to receive the gift I was offering him. “Yes, I do,” he said.

So I prayed with Sucker to receive Jesus as his Savior, and for Jesus to deliver him from the bitterness and fear that had driven him to become an alcoholic.

When I opened my eyes, he looked like a different man!

Before we parted, he said, “Thank you for bringing me this peace—and by the way, my name is George.”

Two weeks later, back at the market, I didn’t even recognize him! He was clean-shaven and well groomed. He was also eager to pray with me and the other members of The Family that I was with, and happy to receive the Conéctate (Spanish edition of Activated) magazine and small stack of other Family literature we offered him.

The following week he told us that he had read the literature over and over. He had also sat and talked to Jesus for a couple of hours, and had concluded by telling Him he needed to find work. Because of his violent and argumentative behavior, George had been fired from job after job.

“And can you believe it,” he said, “one minute later a boy walked up to me and said his father was offering me a job at his stall—the same man who swore one month ago that I would never work for him again!” George was so excited at how quickly the Lord had answered his prayer!

On that visit, he asked us to pray with him three times about various matters—once for the Lord to help him stop drinking completely. Jesus had been speaking to him about that.

“The strangest thing happened to me the other day,” he said. “I was drinking with my buddies when all of a sudden I felt Jesus nudge me on the shoulder and tell me to put down my wine—and I did! I just got up and walked away. I never would have done that before! Then, about 20 minutes later, the men I’d been drinking with started a big fight, and a policeman came to break it up. This policeman knew he could always find me in the middle of a good fight, so when he saw me sitting nearby, not in the melee, he asked, ‘Don’t you belong in there?’ When I told him no, he just stared at me and asked, ‘What’s happened to you?’ Jesus is changing me. I can feel it, and others can see it. Now I want to pray that I can stop drinking completely.”

When George said he didn’t think he could survive another cold, damp winter on the street, I offered to pray for him to find a place to stay at a rent he could afford. He wasn’t so sure.

“Didn’t Jesus get you a job when you thought that was impossible? And isn’t He helping you overcome your alcoholism? Is it any more to ask of Him to give you a place to stay? Now that you belong to the Lord and your heart is on His side, Jesus will never fail to care for you,” I assured him.

He looked at me with hopeful eyes. Then it clicked. “Wow! Of course!” he nearly shouted.

The last time I saw George, he told me that a large citrus company had offered him a supervisory job, complete with living quarters.

Better news still, he said he felt he could once more face his wife and grown twin daughters. “With all the miracles Jesus has done for me, I’m sure He can help me make amends and touch their hearts to take me back. All this is proof that He is with me. Now, no matter what the problem, I feel that Jesus is saying, ‘Trust Me!’”

Hannah Book is a full-time volunteer with The Family International in Argentina.