Meet Sarah, Sarah, is a young woman who looks to be in her 30’s. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She is attractive. Sarah is soft spoken and well spoken as they say in Oklahoma. In Colorado you would say that she speaks good grammar. She likes crackers. She is very polite. She is very appreciative.

   She likes to eat crackers and cheese. She is particularly fond of Triscuits and cheese with a little bologna on the cracker as well. She loves Mangoes and knows how to pick out the good ones. She picked me out two which were very good. She doesn’t like soft drink but loves natural juices.

   She says that she thinks she has put on about 30 pounds in the last couple of years. She says that she would like to quit smoking but is afraid she would gain weight. She smokes Basics 100s or something like that.

   She just arrived in Boulder Thursday, which was the day that it snowed. She is from Phoenix and can’t understand why any one would want to live in a place where it snowed on May Day. She said it was beautiful here with all the flowers and that on May Day when she was a little girl that her grandmother would have her make little pictures of flowers in a basket. They would cut out the handle and put them on her grandmother’s door when she would spend the night. She said that she loved that because in Phoenix where she lived it was mostly cactus and dirt that grew in the ground, not flowers.

Meet John, John obviously has a disability. It looks like Cerebral Palsy. He walks with two canes. His wife is an amputee. He uses her wheel chair to walk as he is pushing her down the street. She holds his canes and pushes a basket which seems to be holding about every thing they owned.

   Yep, you guessed it. They are both homeless. I didn’t actually meet John. That is a made up name. I just saw him out by social services. I am getting some help at the mental health center there. The Boulder aging services is there and Social Services and Mental Health share the same campus. Because of that I am a little more apt to pull money out of my purse these days and try to help. I did meet Sarah. She and two other homeless people were sitting under the cover of the overhang that leads into Safeway. We were just about to go on a mission assignment when I discovered that I needed to purchase some hair spray. I walked up to them and asked how there day was going. Sarah smiled and said that it was fine. How was my day going? She replied. She had a beautiful smile except that she had some teeth missing. I asked if one of them would like to go into Safeway to buy some groceries. She put out her cigarette with her shoe and ran into the store. I’m not that fast any more so she ran back. She said, “Really, is this for real?” I said, “Sure, my family was homeless for a while when I was a kid and I know how much we appreciated it when someone would give us money for food.” I said, “I could give you some money or some groceries but I wouldn’t know what you like. Pick out some things. It can’t be a lot of groceries because I don’t have a lot. I was dressed in my mission clothes, which were mostly clothing that I had picked up from Thrift stores, so we were dressed very much alike. She was very frugal. She asked if she could pick out two for one when she got her cheese and mostly tried to pick things that were on sale. The mangoes were two for a dollar. She picked a bottle of juice that was not on sale but it was at my insisting.

   She had tattoos on every finger and on her hands. She looked like she might have had one tattoo on the palms of her hands as well. I couldn’t see much more because it was cold. She had a coat and hat on. She was dirty. Her hands were so dirty that it made her hands look likes she might have had the beautiful brown skin of the Hispanics but she  was Caucasian. She spent about $25 of my money. She very politely handed me my mangoes and said, “Thank you very much, Jackie.” I found myself wanting to hug her as we parted. She asked how to get to the Shelter. I gave her directions. I told her that they had hot showers and washing machines and the food was pretty good. I knew because I had cooked there myself through a ministry through our church. I said, “You can’t have alcohol or drugs on the premises but really is very nice.” She said, “I gave up those things a long time ago. It’s been a long time since I’ve been like this but I just got laid off.”