A week ago news was buzzing in our poor community that an older lady, who is like a grandmother to everyone, fell and broke her hip. You actually have heard a story about her before. She is the woman in the story called "The Tithe" written a few weeks back. The news of this tragedy traveled fast through the community, and she was mentioned by several people at our weekly time for prayer concerns before the Sunday lunch.
There's hardly any need to know last names in this particular culture/community. In some cases simply getting assigned a nickname suffices especially if you have a defining characteristic (I have not been assigned one yet, but perhaps maybe one day). Being that absolutely no one knew Shirley's last name, we had no way of finding her in the hospital. The good news was Shirley gets picked up on our Sunday Shuttle (a church van that travels around Norman picking up people without transportation), so we had an idea of where her "home"was.
I had our staff sign a card for her, and I ventured out to deliver it with a small grocery sack.
What I found was her husband sitting on the covered porch in a rocking chair. We talked about cigarettes, family history, and God for what had to have been an hour in the shade of his porch on a hot Norman afternoon.
I learned three things that day:
(1) You don't have to go to a different country to find people who are starving physically and socially.
(2) Fear keeps us from having so many life-changing encounters.
(3) Hope draws people together
Thanks for reading, everyone! (Shirley is recovering on schedule by the way)
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