I encourage you to read the story below from today’s Dallas News.
This is the story of one of the former “Lost Boys of Sudan” who came to America and ended up living in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation.
UNIVERSITY PARK – If it is possible to experience God’s grace in the produce section at Tom Thumb, then it surely happened when Deanna Charles asked a stock boy if the store would donate snacks for her daughter’s school band practice.
For weeks after that, the stocker, Bol Malual, personally delivered fruit to Highland Park High School. But when Charles happened to se
e him paying a co-worker in the checkout line one day, she realized there had been a cosmic misunderstanding.
“I just lost it,” Charles said. “I was mortified and said, ‘Oh my gosh, Bol, have you been donating this fruit all this time?’ “
He smiled and said, “Yes, but Mrs. Deanna I want to; I really want to help the kids.”
(Read the rest of the story here.)
Basically the story tells about the difficulties of men like Bol, one of a number of the “Lost Boys” who are in America right now.
Hopefully, you paused for a moment to read the entire story. I was also moved by this part of the interview:
. . . Last week he sat in a booth at Peggy Sue BBQ in Snider Plaza.
Charles, the band mom who befriended Bol, also noted the cultural chasms.
“I was so surprised to learn how he had been in the U.S. for almost a decade on his own and had never had a birthday gift, never ate at a sit-down restaurant, never went to a movie, never went to the dentist or doctor and didn’t own an umbrella,” she said.
“These guys, basically, they eat one meal a day. There are several guys that go a couple days without food,” said West. “They’re hard workers; they want to do well.”
Question:
What is there in this story that you find encouraging or inspirational?
What inspired me most is his incredibly wise insight that his service doesn’t have to “save everyone” to be of great value. We are so often convinced that our potential is of little value because it will only affect a few people, and so that potential never becomes actuality.
I’m trying to go to Honduras for a week in February for just that reason: to do a little that will help a few, because everyone and everything matters.