I used to think that angels were celestial beings with cute little wings that could fly at the speed of light and touch people in magical ways. But I thought this really only happened in the movies, not real life. Recently, my eyes have been opened to a new definition of what an angel looks like or does.
Last week Casey, April and I were on our way to meet a man from Campus Crusade. We were in the general area, but not the exact spot where we were supposed to meet him. Casey’s phone rang and it was our contact. He didn’t know the city well enough to give us directions. We happened to be next to a police officer, so Casey tried to hand him the phone, but he didn’t speak any English so he was real reluctant to take the call. At that exact moment, a Serbian man appeared and translated what Casey was trying to tell the police man, which informed him the call was in Serbian, not English. The police man accepted the call and before their conversation was over, the mysterious “angel” man had already disappeared into the crowd.
A few days ago, Casey and I were on our way to find an orphanage in Belgrade. We thought we knew the directions, but turns out that we were headed slightly the wrong way. After walking for about half an hour, we began asking some locals if they knew the address we were looking for. Nope, no, and I dunno were the responses. Then we were approached by a man who asked if we needed help. Yes, of course. He took one look at the address and immediately asked, “is this the home for boys and girls with no moms and dads?” Yes, we answered. He began to contemplate how to navigate directions for us and then on second thought said, “well, I have an extra hour, I’ll take you to the bus stop that will take you to the orphanage.” Naturally, a complete Serbian stranger who speaks almost perfect English would walk by us at that exact time and have a free hour of his day to walk with us to where we needed to be. Naturally. Well, as we began walking and talking, turns out he is a child psychiatrist who works with the children we were going to see! And he was so touched that we would travel all the way here to his country to help these kids, how could he not help us? Wow, only an “angel” could have that prospective!
Finally just the other day, Casey and I were on our way to Novi Sad, a city 2 hours north of Belgrade, to meet another contact. We bought our tickets and waited for the 8:25 train. As the time was approaching, there still wasn’t a train on the track we were expecting. (Turns out that 2 on our ticket was second class, not track 2!) With the fear of missing the train and anxiety rising in me, I turned to Casey and said out loud, “we just need to find someone who speaks English to help us.” As soon as the words left my mouth a girl turns around and says, “do you need help?’ Yes please! We told her where we needed to go and she said I’m going there too but the train is running a half an hour late. Ok, so we decided to go sit and wait. Later, we heard another announcement but obviously didn’t understand the Serbian. We found that girl again and she said now the train was going to be an hour and forty five minutes late. We continued to talk to her for a few minutes and another announcement came over the speaker. She turned to us and said, “well, turns out it is not coming at all.” Welcome to Europe! Praise God she helped us get our money back (well, all but 3 dinars) and we offered her to come hang out and meet everyone else at our hostel. Instantly she agreed! We all relaxed and chatted and showed her our webpage and videos and all and just hung out for 3 hours. As we were getting ready to come back to the train station for the 1:30 train, she announces that she can no longer go to Novi Sad, she’ll go tomorrow. Conveniently she just happened to be there this morning to help us out, hear our story, share some coffee and pictures and then leave.
I just can’t wait for when one of these encounters happens and instead of walking away, they just go “POOF!”
