There are no black people in Seattle (Part II)

I realized that I left out the really great part of what happen with Dee. She, as she would say, wanted to spend her last days on the west coast with her west coast family, who were us. That is pretty incredible. She arrived on Greyhound on Thursday, and all the ladies picked me up from an event I had for work. We then went to a BBQ or on the East Coast we call it a Cookout because there was no BBQ. It was here when Dee said to us, "There are no black people in Seattle, huh?" We said no, not when compared to Oakland. And she said, "That's alright you guys always have me." and she smiled.

Dee spent the entire weekend with us and flew out on Monday. Other than major food issues, and drying laundry at 2AM on Sunday night which sounded like a roll of quarters came loose in it. We had an amazing visit.

Our family tradition is to have a time of worship on Sundays sometime after church and before bed. It was such a blast to have Dee acting out skits that Aidyn made up to illustrate the part of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation." We talked about all that we rely on to keep us free from temptation, those things that God gives us, and of course God. And we prayed for Dee and her new start at life.

There were a couple things I learned from our visit. 1. Elders deserve respect. Dee is well into her 40s and maybe even 50. She has lots of life experience and it was a wild balance of caring for her while she was at our house and respecting her wishes. It was like having family stay. 2. Just because you have been homeless for years does not make you have less of an opinion about anything. Dee had very strong opinions on mortgages, child raising, food, and pretty much anything else. I couldn't help but smiles sometimes about how passionate she was. 3. The family of God is really fun. I cannot tell you how blessed we are to be friends with Dee. She calls regularly now and checks up on us and checks in. 4. Never underestimate what God is doing. Our time in Oakland was challenging and having to leave so quickly we often wonder if we had much of an impact. Having Dee reminded us that God used us in some pretty cool ways.