We served breakfast as usual this morning and a couple of things happened that were blog worthy.
We’ve been serving breakfast in the homeless camps for almost three years. Also, I have had ocular melanoma for almost one year. Both experiences have been amazing and have informed my life in ways I never could have imagined. I would not have picked either, given a choice but they both just kind of happened to me, like weather. But they did happen to me and my life is so very much richer because of the experience. Seriously. Way richer.
What informed me the most is how other people in my situation have chosen to deal with the challenge. For example:
I have met homeless people who love God more than *almost all* housed people I know.
I have met outreach volunteers who are more Christ-like than *almost all* people I have ever met in church.
I would never have experienced these things were I not lead into the homeless camps, and into cancer.
So my two things I wanted to blog about were these…
First, this morning at homeless breakfast, Larry Sisterman opened the gate for us again at First Stop, for the forth or fifth week in a row. He’s a really nice guy and he felt we would be too cold outside this morning so, in addition to opening the gate, he invited us to serve breakfast inside! What a great host! Larry is a gracious man to the homeless in Huntsville, and to us. I respect his servants heart and I am so happy that his path had crossed mine. He shared military war stories with my friend Andrew Dean, an Air Force colonel, and seemed to have a good time. I love how the walls between us come down easily with the application of love and trust. I know that some in our little gang (Melissa!) have had problems with one or two people at First Stop over the years but, from my perspective, we agree much more than we disagree; and we can help each other.
Second, my new friend Dusty and his daughter Windsor came to breakfast for the first time. He’s been to First Pres before, to drop off material he was donating to Village Outreach but I have not gotten to meet him yet. Dusty’s a picker so he buys and sells stuff all the time. Recently, he bought a storage locker somewhere and found that it contained stoves, lanterns and hundreds of MRE (meals ready-to-eat), and other disaster supplies. He donated tons of it to us and we’ve really been able to use it. So I was really eager to meet him when he told me he was planning on coming to serve breakfast with us. It was great to meet them, they are both really nice and have worked with the poor before, in Birmingham at a mission and thrift store in Oak Mountain and through their church. They fit right in to our little gang and said they wanted to become really involved. That’s really great, can’t wait to get to know them better!
