Wednesday, August 25, 2010

A Homeless Man and his Tostones - A Modern Day Widow's Mite Story

A Toston is a 50 cent piece of a Lempira, equivalent to about 2.5 cents of a dollar.
Osman is a 22 yr old homeless kid who goes by the name Payaso (clown).  He's a bit of a trouble maker and to be quite honest I'm usually not too excited to see him walk through the door at church.  He tends to wind people up more than he participates in the service.  
At the end of the service on Sunday I announced that next week we would start taking up an offering.  The first destination for our offering will be chairs so that we can get up off of the floor for the church service.  Everyone was really excited about pitching in and several people said that they would bring chairs to donate next week.  I'm excited to see what next week brings.
So as we're getting ready to go have dinner Payaso scoots over next to me on the floor and puts 4 tostones in my hand and shyly says, "this is all I have, but you can have it."  Then he gets up and goes to have his dinner.  
I was incredibly humbled.  I've never been in the position where in order to give I had to literally give all that I had.  I have a feeling there will be more of these stories to come.  I learn more from these people than I could ever hope to teach them.

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