Life in The Family International

The other day we had a pretty embarrassing misunderstanding when we showed up for an audition at an Italian restaurant in the city center (all dressed up in our colorful singing outfits) only to find out the owners had no idea we were coming. Kindly they explained that we had wasted our time because they only play Italian music, and the restaurant was too cramped for a group of 6 performers.

Not cool!

Since they had no idea who we were, we figured we might as well pull out the photo album and explain it to them. Then, instead of us being embarrassed at having turned up unannounced, they were embarrassed for not having received us better!

“Please come in and order a drink! There is no money in this restaurant, but we sure have food, so let me offer you that.”

It turned out that the man is no restaurateur, but rather a doctor who sort of inherited this cute little Italian place. He is building a charity hospital in the south of Mexico and is involved in several pro bono initiatives, but has recently become tired and discouraged with the obstacles that life seems to throw at him. He was so relieved to be finally understood and encouraged by people with a similar vision, and when we sang the song “You can change the world” he broke down and wept. He wanted us to stay there forever, and when we left he looked each of us in the eyes and thanked us… for everything.

We’re still in touch with him and will be dropping by his place later on this week. I think it’s great how things can seem to go completely wrong, but in the end turn out to be one of God’s setups.

After many years of doing office-type missionary work, Florecita is testing her hand as a field missionary. She is currently the counselor of a group of teenagers, does outreach, restaurant singing… and anything that is needed to help her center and its projects keep momentum. She is also an aficionado of photography and hopes that with it she can show the world a little more of The Family International, its projects, and the wonderful people in it. More about Flo

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 8:22 am and is filed under Outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.