Retreat

We recently met for a reunion with the 1995-’96 USA Missions staff at a retreat in Pennsylvania.

The young men of that time are 50 plus. The mission couple from that era will be moving into a beautiful church-operated care home. I saw the gray hairs and the slower steps of some of us.

We prayed together. I heard difficult life stories. After telling the hard things, I’d hear, “Life has been good.”

We reminisced about our being together in NYC 30 years ago. It was the time of the token and of riding the Redbird cars on the 7 train. The men talked about how being responsible for devotional time at the Pantry shaped them for service. All of us remember Mrs. Chin, who owned the building and lived below us, knocking on our apartment door and telling us that we’re making too much noise – so much so that a picture even fell from her wall.

We laughed about how Mr. Chin took the mission van’s backseat from beside the garage to the street, and how though Laurence ran, the men operating the trash truck said, “You’re too late. It’s already crushed.”

Then there was the old Indian man in Bible study who got upset when a Bible was placed on the floor, if someone leaned on their arms when talking, or even if someone wiggled in the office chair, he would tell us, “You must respect the God!”

One of the men talked about how he’d been taken for a beggar after spending a day working at Habitat for Humanity. A passeby had dropped a coin in his coffee!

A lady picked up a tract two of the young men had set by a payphone. When the train came in, she sat between them. With tears, she told them that they must be angels. She’d been ready to throw herself in front of the train before taking the tract that saved her life.

So many stories. Yesterday, I stood with one of the former young men and his wonderful family and looked up to the 3rd floor apartment in Woodside, Queens, where it all began. The Chins have passed on. However, the window shades still look the same. The planes must still fly low behind the bedroom windows, the ones with a view of the Empire State Building.

The young men have mellowed, married, and matured. They have beautiful families. They can still make me laugh. I felt loved. What mattered most though was seeing their feet planted on the Solid Rock and making sure steps towards Heaven.

Berniece