We had a give away on CAPC (crazyaboutpincushons@yahoogroups.com)this last few days and I missed the deadline for sending in my story....so here it is.
Many years ago, when my DH & I lived in Denver, we were very involved in all things happening at our church. The Pastor of our church was a long time family friend, who we could not say no to! He also had a soft spot for the homeless. Anyway, the thing we enjoyed doing the most was giving away the coffee and donuts after every mass on Sunday. It gave us a chance to really get to know the parishioners. As I said the homeless population of Denver were always welcome in our church and there were many. We had two older homeless gentlemen that we called "The Smith Brothers", because they looked just like the guys on the cough drop box. Needless to say they were two of our favorites and we used to give them extra coffee and donuts. We even bought them thermos' for when it was really cold in the winter so they could have some coffee to go. There was a very wealthy parishioner at our church that gave us $10,000 at Christmas time to be given to the homeless in $10 increments. We were able to give a lot of people a chance at a decent meal for one or two days anyway. Well, we did our $10 give away on Saturday...it was very cold that day. So the next morning, we were doing our coffee duty and we
see the Smith Brothers coming down the stairs...they were clean and we could see big smiles on their faces...John and I thought what in the world has happened to them. It took a few minutes for us to see that they had their hands behind their backs and were patiently working their way through the line. When they got to us, each one of them handed us a package, wrapped the best they could. We opened our packages and in them...there was a beautiful unicorn music box, that still resides in my china cabinet today and for John a very nice linen handkerchief. Needless to say, I cried until I was dry eyed and John was positively stunned. We questioned them and found out that after they got their $10 they went to a pawn shop and bought our gifts, made sure they got to the shelter, so they could clean up and spend the night at the shelter and asked for help wrapping the gifts at the shelter. For these gentlemen to give up something that could have fed them was beyond selfless. From that point on, we made sure that they were never without a meal everyday. Either John or I would go find them and take them somewhere close where we could feed them. When we moved, we made sure that they were still fed everyday at a local restaurant. Unfortunately, a year after we moved to Oregon, they were found frozen to death, but even in death they were together. I will never forget the Smith Brothers, nor their kindness to us.
1 comment:
What a marvelous story ~ THANK YOU for sharing it here. Our younger son spent an academic year working at a homeless shelter as part of his MSSW program. Having listened to all that he shared with us, your story takes on added poignancy. Bless you for caring and even more for putting your caring into action.
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