A Rat in its Glory!!

I posted about my friend from the USA who became a missionary in Tanzania. I am blessed to speak with him almost everyday. He shares his stories of what he is seeing, experiencing and journaling. I feel so lucky because it is through his voice I hear the joys, sorrows and often time surprises!!

As you may know, my passion to feed the hungry in Tanzania has been my driving force from the beginning. I have found ways to do this by enriching people from the USA to help me to help others. We are so blessed in our world and the ones we serve remain often times without hope until our pallets of food arrive. They are then reminded that hundreds upon thousands of people truly do care and want them to be nourished.

Well, my friend was telling me that he had purchased a few grocery items from the local market the other day. He purchased a loaf of bread, some peanut butter and some fruit. He had put in a rather long day working to build a small building with the nationals who were assigned to help. It was HOT, extremely windy and he had been doing physical labor all day. After the sun was down, he began walking home. He was so tired, but happy. He had spent an incredible day doing something that was going to be a wonderful blessing to those in the village. He was flooded with recent memories of how he laughed with the nationals who were speaking swahili ~ yet they all spoke the same language. It was a wonderful day...with no breaks.

He had almost reached his room and he remembered the bread and peanut butter. He was SO excited to take a shower, put on his comfortable clothes and relax with a piece of bread. As he walked into his room he was greeted by a rat!! YES a rat..who had found his loaf of bread!! The rat WAS NOT in anyway going to move until he finished HIS dinner. My friend stared at him and with his generous heart allowed his friend the RAT to carry on and be nourished. He said it broke his heart because he was the skinniest rat he had ever seen.

Can you imagine the look on the rats face when he spotted that loaf of bread??? I am sure it is much like the children and adults we feed with our fortified rice meals. Their hearts begin to leap up for joy when they see the pallets of food arrive ~ it is heaven if only for that one meal.

I guess each and everyone of us can understand that when something or someone needs to be fed and we are already fed ourselves, we just let it happen. I am proud of my friend who just let his little rat friend enjoy his meal...for now his belly is fed too.

Blessings and peace