Friday, October 23, 2009

Friends in the right places




Feeding at the stadium went great today.  Tuesday we had an incident at La Chimbomba with the puppies so we were anticipating another rough night tonight but all went smoothly. 
On Tuesday Jenny slipped this purple bracelet on my wrist and gave me a big hug and walked away.  She didn't say anything but it was the simplest sweetest thing.  On Tuesday Suyapa also gave Rachel a bracelet and told me she would bring me one today but that she needed some extra time to make it because I have fat wrists.  How's that for a gift.  I cracked up. She showed up with this enormous bracelet tonight and we cut it down to normal size.  It was such a sweet gesture.  They have so little but they look for ways to give back to us and that is truly heart warming. 
Tonight I spent a long time talking with Roger, a young tranvestite that's started coming regularly.  He is the sweetest kid and I just cannot imagine how hard his life must be.  There are more and more kids landing on my "oh my goodness I just want to take you home and show you that the world is not such a terrible place" list.  The pain in some of their eyes is enough to haunt you for weeks.  Another one of these haunting kids is a boy at la chimbomba, he's probably 17 or 18, and very "tough".  The first few times he came he tried to steal different things from Darwin and was very threatening.  He still has this tough exterior but we've developed a repoire over the few weeks.  Tonight we were talking and I said something that made him laugh and for half a second put his head on my shoulder and gave me this half hug.  It truly breaks my heart for them when they are reaching out for love but are afraid of what that means. 
We also had an older gentleman come by tonight, probably in his 60's if I had to guess maybe a little younger.  He said that a couple of times his wife had come back to their home and said she wasn't hungry because someone had given her food.  He didn't believe her, people don't just give you food, especially more than once.  So tonight he came to check it out for himself.  He was the sweetest man.  He stood and talked to us for the longest time.  His first question was "Why, why are doing this?" and I answered, "because I believe it is God's will." His eyes teared up.  "Of course, of course it is God's will.  Thank you, thank you."  We continued to talk for a long time and later I overheard him talking to another man that had stopped by.  They were talking about how this was the first time they had seen someone just come and hand out food with no strings attached.  It was neat to eavesdrop on their conversation and see a seed of God's love be planted in their hearts.  The man took his plate and his cup saying they were special and promised to return another day with a decal for our car.  He was selling small car decals but said they weren't good enough to give away.  I'm not sure what to think about the car decal but I'm so glad we touched his life tonight.

On a much lighter note, we've made good friends with the couple that sells fruit near the stadium and they have fun trying to find new fruits we haven't tried.  About once a week when we stop by, we stop by almost every night we go feed, they come out with a new fruit I've never seen or heard of.  Tonight it was Granadilla, after looking it up online it is in the passion fruit family but is different from a passion fruit.  And it is DELICIOUS.  They gave us two and we bought 6 more.  It's been fun making friends with this couple and I know that we will continue to get laughs from each other. 

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