Divine appointments or Random happenings

 Divine appointments or Random happenings

Today on the way home from church we ended up helping an old man who tripped and fell.  But we wouldn’t have been there if a number of other events hadn’t taken place. 

 

First, we decided to leave church instead of sticking around for a members’ meeting.  The meeting would have been in Russian, and I wasn’t up to another hour or so of Russian language, especially after a sermon in Russian that came at me like machine gun fire.  But then I realized I needed to refill my phone, so on our way to the bus stop I went down the metro entrance to find either someone selling phone cards but ended up recharging my phone at an electronic kiosk.  Once I was done with that AnnMarie and I got right onto a marshrutka headed for our place. 

 

We got off at our stop and then decided to pop into the renok (bazaar) to pick up some carrot rolls (watch for a post from AnnMarie to answer the question as to what those are).  Then we headed towards home but as we were crossing the bridge we saw something that caught our eye.  It caught our eye because in talking to AnnMarie’s mom last night we learned that she was sending us white beans, amongst some other things.  Well this couple was selling white beans (in three different forms) in plastic bags for about $2.00 a bag.  We walked by them and said, “Hey, do you think we should take a picture?”  So I went back and asked them if I could take their picture with the beans.  I am not really one for doing that.  I don’t like taking photos of others and publicizing them as a general rule unless they are our friends.  Well, they asked where we were from and we had a fairly long conversation in a mix of English and Russian.  Then we said our goodbyes and crossed the bridge onto our island. 

 

Then I noticed the line at the bread kiosk.  It was long, but we needed bread so after AnnMarie encouraged me that standing in line would be fine if I got us a loaf of bread.  Finally we stopped at the meat and cheese kiosk and I purchased some Edam cheese, as we had just used up the last of our cheese. 

 

So finally we got to our building and shortly after we rounded the corner I was looking ahead and I saw this man go straight down on his face.  I was concerned as the way he fell just looked like he went head first without trying to stop himself.  I handed off everything to AnnMarie and ran to his side.  He was conscious and bleeding.  I had some tissues in my coat pocket and I just stayed with him till he got his wits around him.  He was probably 70 something and was just bringing some groceries home.  I think he tripped but because his hands were full, he wasn’t able to stop himself.  He had some scrapes on his hands and face, but wasn’t too bad off.  I was able to help him up and see him to his entrance.  He lives in our building in the next stairwell.

 

For me it seemed like everything was a line of divine appointments.  If we had not stopped at one of the places we had, we would never have been there to stop and help this old man.  I was surprised how many people just walked by and didn’t seem to take notice.  I guess they thought he was drunk or something.  But I felt like we made more new friends today; Serge and Ksenia on the bridge and this old man, who I will be keeping an eye out for.  God is so good.  It feels so good when you do the littlest thing to help someone or when you start a new friendship – Looking forward to more divine appointments in the days ahead.