Feed The Children distribution

Tuesday after work, I went to find the Feed The Children food distribution I had previously volunteered to help with.  I found this especially interesting since I work with FTC to ship their food internationally.

I walked up in time to meet two blue-FTC-tshirtted volunteers leaving a mostly empty parking lot where the distribution was in the final stages of cleaning up.

I missed it, but I wasn’t too discouraged. I was standing on the edge of an interesting-looking neighborhood, so I decided to go in and take some pictures. As I walked down sidewalks and crossed streets and turned corners I saw people everywhere. Some were walking to places while others were just walking, or sitting.

While walking, I passed one such woman sitting on her steps; she was surrounded by her two kids (that is, two kids that could have been twenty kids at speed they bounced!).  She called out hey and motioned me closer. After saying hi I stood there waiting while she starred at me. Long enough to make me think perhaps she didn’t call me after all. Then after some more thought, she asked if I was a “paparazzi.”

“No,” I smiled.

“Oh, then you’re a good samaritan.”

Uhh, well, I guess, if those are the two options… okay.

I went on to explain I came to help with the distribution (which was a little ways away from her house), and perhaps that’s what she was referring to. That seemed to be satisfactory, because next she told me to lean in closer so no one around would hear what she was about to say.

I’ll admit, this piqued my interest a little. I had no idea what she was about to tell me.

And she wasted no time, in hushed tones she delved into what was a long story about herself: the raps she creates–which she doesn’t always understand herself; the symbolism of her tattoos (including the two she had done just one night before); and the way the people around her can’t seem to grasp her message.

In short, she was special and wanted me to know it. Maybe because I was different looking (a short-haired white boy in a black neighborhood). I’m not sure of the reason, but nevertheless she was insistent upon telling me these things.

Up to this point I hadn’t done any talking (except to ask her name. Veronica). Truthfully, I had no idea what to say. I was still back trying to figure out what was going on. Everything in her body language suggested she was being honest in her intention. So, I kept going with it.

As she bounced from one topic to another, she touched a few times on some vague ideas of God and eternity and her life-mission–which, I may add, consisted of not many more words than that.

It was here I intervened to ask this direct woman a pointblank question: “Veronica, where are you going when you die?” With not much confidence, she relayed to me lines she’d heard before about good people going to heaven, so I got specific and asked her in a new way: “Veronica, where are you going when you die?”

I began to see she was thinking. Not regurgitating.

From here we talked openly about how a person gets to heaven, how it’s not about good people doing good things, and how everyone has to chose for themselves.

Growing up in this city, everyone knows something about God; there are subcultures upon subcultures all laced with their own theologies about how to get to heaven. The details are never boring, but the end results are always the same, be good: go to heaven. As we talked I listened to what she said, and she was reinforcing this.

After we had been through what the Bible says about becoming a Christian, I asked her if she wanted that.

She did. We prayed. She’s in.

Veronica: