Blog - The Bus Stop

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As you go through life you are given the opportunity to show up in people's lives or pass by unaware. Each day we all get to make the choice whether or not to make an impact in others by serving their physical, emotional, or spiritual needs. If you've taken the opportunity to impact the lives around you, we'd like you to share your "As you go" experience with the rest of the Gateway community on the blog below.

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The Bus Stop

Location: Blogs MobiBlog
Posted by: mynextsteps	3/3/2008 4:13 PM
My husband and I were on vacation two weeks ago and one day we couldn’t figure out where to go eat lunch. We ended up driving down the road until we found this out of the way secluded place that was quiet and hardly any people around. After we ate, we were walking back to our car with our kids when we noticed a young Asian girl staring at a map and looking confused. As we got closer to her, she looked up at us. She had the sweetest face so I asked her if we could help her. She said that she was a foreign exchange student and had just gotten to America 2 days ago and had come to that restaurant that day to figure out her bus route before she started work that next Monday. She said she got there and was able to get her uniform, but she didn’t have a cell phone that would work yet in the US and needed to call the bus depot to have a bus come back and pick her up. She spoke some English, but it was very broken and she said it had been hard to communicate with people because we talk so fast. My heart was filled with so much compassion for her. Here was this young girl who had traveled all the way from Taiwan and was trying to her best to set herself up here in this new world. As I looked over at my own children, I thought of her mom and dad back home and knew that helping her was why we ended up there. I told her I would love to help her and pulled out my phone and the map that had the phone number on it. We called the number on the paper several times, would wait, and then try again but couldn’t ever reach anyone. She decided she was going to walk back up the hill to the restaurant and see if they could help her. She said she was so thankful we offered to help her and that she hoped it didn’t take away too much from our day (we were there about a half hour with her total). I wanted to just give her a ride, but she said she needed to learn how to do this herself (which I so admired!). I offered her the other half of my sandwich from lunch, and told her I was so proud of her for being so brave to come over here and experience this in her life. I also told her not to be afraid to tell us Americans to slow down while we talk. I gave her a hug and then we left. When we got back to our car, we prayed for her. I was sad at first because I felt like we had “failed” her, but I think now that is faulty thinking. We stopped and made a sweet connection with her and that can’t be failure. The mission wasn’t to get her on that bus. It was to connect with this person who’s here in a strange land and offer her hope that she’s going to be ok in this new season of her life. I’m still so proud of her and pray that she’s growing beautifully.

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