I love surprises. So I’m not sure if it’s always God’s leading or not but sometimes you can just end up at the right place during the right time. Many times this happens when you least expect it.
About a month ago when the entire squad was together one of the teams was telling stories of the street children that they got to know the past month and how they were able to bless a lady with money to open up an orphanage for them. Just from half listening I heard that they were all living on the stairs of an old supermarket. Many of them are without food and clothes and will get high and try to sleep most of the day and night to escape. What an amazing opportunity this woman had now to start an orphanage for these kids. It was really a surprise when the team from the squad ran into these children during their month and got to help them.
That afternoon with the entire squad together 4 of us went out to walk around a little and look for a brand of soda we like. It’s called Novida. I also just really wanted to take Bota Botas into town. A Bota Bota is a bicycle that a man pedals with a seat on the back that you ride around in, and so far they are my favorite mode of transportation.
Now we’re looking for the soda and each time going out a little further to stores because no place seems to be carrying Novida. We reach the supermarket where we are told they are sold, but nope. Apparently we really had nothing to do that day cause we just keep walking until surprise, I notice a group of children all sleeping on steps. Hmm. So I look up and it’s an old supermarket that is now shut down. Something hit us that these children almost looked dead they were just passed out everywhere.
Instead of looking for the soda now we are trying to figure out if these are the street kids we were told about. Its clear to see that yes they are. And right before we walk by them to go home something just pulls us into the grocery store next door where we buy bread and peanut butter. There’s this kind of cool/funny moment where we are peering over at the kids deciding how to give them the peanut butter sandwiches without to much chaos. Of course there’s prob. no way of that happening so without much of a plan we walk over to the children.
Without them being able to understand much English we use one person to make a line, one person to hand out the bread, and two people to put peanut butter on with a pocket knife. This was not how the day was supposed to go, we were only out trying to find soda, but surprise we were serving food to street children. We really didn’t do anything expect serve where there was an opportunity. I guess the biggest difference of that day was that we were willing to be surprised and do something different.
After giving them two sandwiches each they gave all 4 of us the biggest hugs and thanked us. Ok now this was a huge deal for me because so many African children just don’t hug very well, they shake hands. But these kids hugged. Not only hugged but cleaned our hands off from all the peanut butter on them. The hugs were my favorite surprise. I can’t say that any of us were disappointed after that about not finding any Novida.
I realize that I’m not always going to have days where I go out for soda and end up feeding street children. These days are the rare exceptions. But I want more days to be surprises. I mean c’mon I need as many days as possible to remind me that it’s not always about me. 😉
