A phone and a slice of bread

"Please write to me," one woman named Crystal said to my mom while we were at the jail. "Do you recognize me?"

"I know you look familiar," my mom said.

"I was the one who came to your front porch that day," she said.

"OH!" my mom said.

Two or three months ago, she had been walking down the road and came up to our house to ask if she could use a phone. She hadn't eaten. I brought out a glass of ice water, a thick slice of buttered homemade bread and an orange. She ate and used the phone and told us her story. She had been beaten up by her boyfriend. She called and asked a friend to come and pick her up. We offered to take her anywhere she needed to go, but she declined. While we were sitting there, her boyfriend drove back and forth down the road several times. Finally, he stopped in front of our house and called Crystal over to the car. "Get in," he said. She got in the car with him and they drove off. We never knew what happened to her after that, but she told my mom that that after they left our house, her boyfriend beat her up really bad. Now, she said, both of them were in jail.

It's amazing how a small act of kindness--a glass of water, a slice of bread, an orange, a seat on our porch, a listening ear--can be used by God to open up a future door of ministry.