Yesterday, after a long morning of working with the kids at the gym, I got to Marcel's dorm starving and ready for lunch. As soon as he got to the door to let me in (he was nice enough to have lunch ready and waiting!), a girl came up to me asking me how to get to Pacific University, which she was already at since we were at the dorm. She then told us that she had just taken the bus from Hillsboro to see her aunt who lived in an apartment near campus--she had no address or phone number! Marcel and I both thought of the same one, and directed her in the right way to go. She seemed confused so Marcel offered me to walk her to where she thought her aunt lived. When we got to the most known Forest Grove apartments, it turns out that she lived in a small house near an apartment complex, so we headed back to campus to drive her around town. In my 15 minutes of walking with A (neither of us can remember her name but know it started with an A) she revealed to me that she was actually trying to find her foster mother's house who she had stayed with just 1 night earlier in the week before getting placed into a more permanent home. She opened up to me about her dad being physically abusive to her and her 10 brothers and sisters, but that she was the only 1 who stood up to him. She was only in foster care because she had confided in a high school teacher who was willing to help A get out of the horrible situation.
Once we got back to campus, we called Marcel for my car keys and he offered to come with. We drove all over Forest Grove and it seemed like everytime we found something that could possibly be the house something in her description changed (just like we were looking for apartments, then suddenly a small house). Turns out the foster mom was supposed to pick her up at Safeway (there's a bus stop there) but she wasn't there when A got off so she decided to find the house herself because she had no phone number to call.
After driving 45 minutes through what always feels like an extremely small town, we did miracously find the correct house: a little red house, very close to where we started, just on a block we somehow skipped!
As Marcel and I headed back to his room, all I could think about was that we did a great thing. Marcel and I pray nightly that God will use us to be a light to other people and today allowed us to see for ourselves that we can in fact be a light. The more interesting thing to me is that I was starving and ready for lunch way before I left work and with the walk time, drive time, then reheat lunch it had been almost 2 hours and I hadn't felt hungry. God took care of my needs so that I could help one of his children in a much worse situation than I've ever been in. The few hours we spent with A opened our eyes to what we're capable of with God's help.
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