Preaching To Drunks At Ybor City Before Gasparilla.

We have been very busy, but also had a very good time the past week and a half. We got in Thursday afternoon and got set up and got ready to pick up a couple of friends who were flying in for the weekend.
Friday Dad and I went out and picked up the friends we had coming in and got the bullhorns and banners ready for Ybor City that night.
We got out to Ybor City about 9:00. We instantly had a crowd of people that did not like us, which is normal when you preach the Gospel of Christ. Some of us were standing in front of a bar on the one corner. And one of the employees came out and told us that he had called the manager, and that we had to leave the corner. And do it now! We told him that it was our Constitutional right to be there and he would just have to live with it. He ended up leaving and his boss came out and told us that we needed to leave, we told him the same thing as his employee. He told us he was calling the police and we would have to deal with them. We told him we would be quite happy to deal with them when they got here. The police arrived and were talking to the manager about us. In the meantime some of us had moved across the street, but we still left some people over there. There was a group of 2 guy's and their girlfriends who came up and started arguing with us, and acting quite stupid as they were somewhat drunk. I started talking to one of the girls who had asked me what we were doing, and why it was a sin to drink.
As I was answering them their one boy friend popped in and hit my hat off, while hitting my face.
My dad then went over and told the police he wanted to press charges for assault. The police came over and made the punks leave for the time being, but did not do their job. They then called my dad over to talk to him, my sister Hope followed with a camcorder. The officer commanded that Hope stay on the one side of the street while they went to the other side with my dad. Hope told the officer that he was a public officer in a public forum therefore she had every right to record him, he still insisted that she stay on the other side. My mother then took over and followed them. The officer finally allowed her to follow him. Once on the other side they told my dad that we were not allowed out there as we were blocking the sidewalk, and specifically pointing and preaching to particular people, which was not allowed. Dad then read them the Constitution stating that we had the right to be out there. Later on the supervisor came over and apologized for his officers actions. He stated that they were new on the force and didn't know how to deal with the preachers.
It was a good night overall, with alot of witnessing and preaching. But there was alot of drunkenness, and wickedness.
I will do a post next week about the actual parade.