Oops.

I should have posted last week...
We should have brought those pamphlets with us...
I should have given him better directions so he could get to Meyerson...
I shouldn't have given out Maria's clothes...


Huh?


Yeah, I shouldn't have given out Maria's clothes...


So, Rena, Grace, and I all headed out around 6:30 or so.  We had a good time: we got rid of most of the clothes right away (including some small women's items) and headed to the concourse to see if we could encounter any familiar faces.  We ran into Richard and met his friend from New Orleans who'd been displaced because of hurricane Katrina.  While Rena and Grace talked with them, I talked to a man who was trying to get help for a woman and her baby.  She'd been kicked out of a shelter already, so they were trying to protect her and support her as much as possible underground, because she'd been red-flagged at the shelters and wouldn't be let in without losing her baby.  I tried to stay out of the politics of the situation, but gave a sweater (yep, another small women's sweater) to the cause.  Rena and I decided to come back out on Wednesday to give them some information about local organizations that could help.

We saw Fred again too.  He's visited Temple services the past couple weeks and tried making it out to UC's service at Meyerson, but he got confused and soaked yesterday morning, and ended up not making it.  Still, he was happy to see Rena and me, and he's still studying away for his GRE's.

In the midst of all this, my roommate calls.  "Hey, guys, do you know what happened to those clothes that were laid out on the couch?  Maria left them for me to borrow..."  Crapper snappers (in the words of Rena).  Luckily, we had saved two suit jackets, but, still...

We walked briskly back to where we first handed things out and asked around.  The woman we'd given them to was gone.  (And I didn't have the heart to look for a baby and take a sweater from her.)

Dejected, guilty, foolish, I walked back home with Rena.  I should have this, I shouldn't have that...  We went straight upstairs to apologize to Maria.  "It's ok... you saved the suit jackets, and they are the most important... and as long as you gave the sweaters to someone who needed them..."  We promised to pay her back.  "Aw, stop feeling bad, you guys look pitiful!"

She was gracious, yes, but nights like these I keep beating myself up.  How could God still use me when I just blindly give away someone else's stuff, without even considering that, hey, this looks a little out of place?  Or when I haven't the heart go back tonight and give the guys info to help the mom and her baby... that I'm tired and hungry and it's "dangerous" later at night, so we'll put it off... God, really, am I all that useful to you?  Am I furthering your kingdom or just hindering it?

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.  Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. --Ephesians 2:8-9

"As long as someone needed them..."  So, yeah, I made a boo-boo.  I guess it's just a reminder that if anything good comes out of what we do on Mondays... it's not because we did something right.  But that God did.