surrender - 26

(Continuing "a surrender," chapter four, "the anawim")

I remember a couple days that stood out for me on that journey. I came to a small church in the evening, thinking I might stop there for the night. Then I noticed someone was there. So, as I usually did, I introduced myself and asked if I could sleep outside the church that night. The man I asked turned out to be the janitor. He called the pastor, but it sounded like the pastor wouldn’t allow me to stay on the church property. So the man made another call. Then he turned to me and told me that his wife said I could come to their house. 

Their house was not very big. It was just one large room, with a small kitchen built onto the back. The bathroom was basically a large outhouse beside the house. When we arrived, I thanked his wife, who was preparing supper, and met his adult son, who was visiting them, with a friend. Because of the extra visitors, there were mattresses laid all over the floor of the one room. So we sat on the front porch while we all ate together. I remember them telling me about their many encounters with scorpions, and telling me to watch out for them. Then they invited me to stay for the night. There was no room to sleep inside, however, so I slept on the covered porch, and their dog slept beside me. It rained hard that night. When I woke up the next morning, their little cat was curled up next to my head.

That morning I rode with the man on his way to work, and we talked. I found out he had recently pawned an old air compressor to get money for food. The whole experience stunned me. They were so poor, yet had gladly shared with me the little they had. And there would be more surprises for me that day. In the late afternoon, I was walking through a town and a woman ran out from a bar, waving at me. I stopped and she smiled. “I saw you walking by,” she said, “and I wanted to give you this.” She had a five-dollar bill in her hand. “I’m just an alcoholic,” she continued with a laugh, “but I thought maybe this would help you.” I smiled and thanked her. It seemed like a big help to me, since I had nothing for my supper. But before I found a place to buy food, I came to a church and an evening service was just starting. So I went in. And after the service, there was a potluck supper. There I met many people, but most of them seemed to shy away from me except for two young girls, about six or seven. They asked me many questions about my journeys, where I had been, where I slept, why I was walking. Then they asked if I would come to their house. When they brought their mother into the conversation, though, she didn’t like that idea. So they went to the pastor. The pastor didn’t like their ideas either. But then she did agree when I asked her if I could sleep on a porch outside the church. Laying on that porch in the dark, I thought back over the last two days. I had been helped by a poor family, an alcoholic, and two young children.

Continued...