Jeff Was Speechless

Ok, for those of you who know Jeff well, you know that he is NOT the type to be left speechless. Well, something happened this week which left him in just that condition. Here is the story:

A few months back, Jeff was introduced to a man by someone from our church. This man was homeless with a 7 year-old son and was staying in a hotel. He had been "adopted" by a small group from our church and they had really been trying to reach out to him. Jeff had been asked if we might be able to find somewhere for him to live. Within the week, someone donated to us a house to use for one year. This alone was an answer to prayer for us and for this man!! This was our very first transitional housing experience. We took this man from being homeless, gave him a place to live and gave him "in house" spiritual counsel from our good friend Rob who decided to live with him.

Soon after, we hired him to help us do the reconstruction on the Vision Onward building. With this house being free transitional housing, he only receives $100 a week from his paycheck each week to live on. The rest of the money he makes goes into a savings account for when he moves out of the transitional housing. We have sinced learned that this guy is extremely talented in construction and has done a fabulous job for us.

He has grown tremendously over the past few months in every area of his life and it has been amazing to watch the transformation. This past week he wanted to meet with Jeff. He started telling Jeff how things had been going so great and he was so thankful for all we had done for him. He proceeded to tell Jeff that the money he had saved up to this point he wanted to give back to Vision Onward. He said he had prayed about it and this was what he wanted to do.

This was where Jeff became speechless. He truly didn't know what to say. Here we have a man who was just homeless a few months ago and still has minimal assets and he wants to GIVE what little money he has saved to US!!! Jeff's first thoughts were to tell him "No, you really need to keep this money for yourself; you will need this money!" But after thinking for a bit, he realized that he didn't want to discourage him about something that he felt God was telling him to do.

This just blew us away!! This man who has so very little has truly had a God experience that has transformed him into a more faith-filled man than most people in our churches today. This man has witnessed how God has taken care of him and knows that he is in God's family now and will always have what he needs!! THAT is what it's all about- - -transforming lives!!

This is the most modern day experience we have ever had that is so similiar to the story of the poor widow woman in the Bible who gave two coins to the treasury and it was all that she had to live on (Mark 12::41-44). Jesus said to his disciples, " Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on."

Sometimes the poor can teach us so many things that we cannot learn anywhere else. We understand why God values the poor so much.