I think I have a new hero.

This is coming to you from the stairs outside my apartment. I wish we had an actual porch, but this landing works wonderfully well for my purposes. My neighbor, Mark, just ran up the stairs and I scared him when he rounded the stair corner. I'm watching a little bird on the roof.

Oh before I tell you what I really want to tell you, let me tell you this story cause I thought it was pretty funny. This morning, Brittany walked into the kitchen and said, "Are those free range peaches?" and I was like, "No. I don't think you can have free range peaches. These are locally grown..." and Brittany said, "No..I mean, can I eat them." and I laughed because the mental image of a free range peach is priceless.

Today after I had lunch with Rachel, I met Emily and Laura at the church to prayer walk for the community. Emily had made contact with the wife of the Bishop of one of the churches. I forget the name..God's House of Refuge, maybe? So we walked down and knocked on the Starnes' door and this little teeny, tiny girl came to the door and just looked at us. She was precious. Her name was Prosperity. So then her Grandmother came to the door and had us sit down. Mrs. Starnes was a grandmother with hair about shoulder length, wearing a colorful dress. We asked how her church started and about the neighborhood and how long they'd been there and what they were doing in the neighborhood. This woman was amazing. She told us stories about the kids that they'd taken in. Her daughter adopted five children. One of the girls had been taken to them by her mother and she would shake because she'd been abused. She told us about the people that they'd let stay in their house. About the crackhouse nextdoor and the prostitutes that would walk down the street. She told us about feeding the homeless in their front yard. She told us how they want to open a home for teen mothers. She wasn't trying to make us see all that she had done, she was just answering our questions. At the end, she just said, I just look to see what I can do. I never feel like I've done enough. She brought the kids out so we could meet them. That made me happy. There were 8 of them. None of them hers. One boy,who I would have been semi-intimidated by, probably in high school came up onto the porch and kissed her on the cheek and introduced his "girl", and went into play with the kids. I guess I just had my world expanded and had my stereotypes blown a little bit away. Emily said this and I think that it's true, if we had met Mrs. Starnes on the street, we wouldn't have thought we had anything in common with her. In the two hours that we talked, we found that we had a lot. I just love the way the Starnes' opened up their home to people. If they could give something away, they would. More than giving away things materially, they gave their lives. They'd lived on that little corner for 17 years.

I think my favorite thing about Mrs. Starnes and her husband, Bishop Starnes, was that every night they would walk around the neighborhood and pray for their neighbors and for their neighborhood.

I guess I just hope that someday I will be like Mrs. Starnes, loving people radically in any way I can.

It reminds me of a little old lady that we met when we went to Juarez, Mexico. She would drive across the border every day with hot dogs to give to the children. She'd done it for years.

Oh to be faithful, oh to love people in the way that Jesus would.



currently drinking: red coolade.
real time: 5:07 PM
currently feeling: rediculously worn out.