As a child I was...
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As a child I was fascinated by the visitors who ate on our back porch. On many occasions I would see a strange man, sitting on a chair, with a small tray in front of him, eating his lunch or dinner. If my father was home, the visitor was invited to eat at our kitchen table. While he ate, our visitor and my father would talk. I remember how interested my father was in the visitor and what the visitor had to say. After they had eaten, my mother would pack another lunch and put it in a paper bag. Then the visitor would leave and we would never see him again. I once asked my mother who these visitors were. She told me that my father called them "messengers from God." One day, one of my friends was making fun of me, and he said, "Your family lives with bums!" When I went home and complained that my friends thought we lived with "bums," my parents told me that some people called them "bums" because they had nowhere to live and no money to buy food, but God sent them to us to remind us of how God has a way to take care of us and that he gave us what we had to share with visitors. Our visitors were always reminders of how God had blessed us and how we could bless others. -- Runk
