By Kay Heitsch
Can you tell me if anyone in our store does community service?" Bill asked. A person spoke up and said," I know that Rose does. She helps the homeless at her church."
My husband Bill had recently been transferred to this store as the Store Manager. Bill liked to recognize employees who worked in community service. He met with Rose and learned about the outreach program in her inner-city church.
Bill told Rose that he thought that I would enjoy helping her.
When Bill came home that night after the two-hour commute, he told me about his conversation with Rose. I was excited at the idea of helping in such a program. I started to spread the word that Bill had an employee helping the homeless out of her church. I asked if anyone wanted to help by donating usable items. The response was terrific.
We lived in a small community where homelessness was unheard of. We had our share of poor people, but no one lived on the street.
Word spread like wildfire. Churches were calling, offering clothing and food. Once a week, I stopped by a church in a nearby town. Each week, I loaded the back end of our van with the things the people in their congregation dropped off.
An older couple from our congregation gave us a check and told us to use the money to buy Bibles and inspirational materials to take to the mission.
On several occasions, I came home and found bags of clothing sitting in front of our garage. Every day when Bill drove to work, his car was loaded with help for people experiencing homelessness, given by total strangers.
I took this opportunity to clean out the closets in our home, too. Bill had an overcoat he seldom wore. I put the overcoat in, along with clothes our children had outgrown and several articles of clothing of my own.
Occasionally, Rose would stop in Bill's office and tell him stories about the mission. One day, she talked about an overcoat that her minister had taken from our donated clothes. As Rose described the overcoat, Bill knew it was his. He was happy that he had been able to provide this young minister with a warm coat.
One cold day, I walked by our downstairs closet. I noticed a snowmobile suit that had been our oldest son, Todd's. The thought of putting this snowsuit in for the mission immediately came to my mind. I dismissed the idea as I saved this snowsuit for Brandon, our youngest son.
Todd had died in a car accident a few years before, and for some reason, I had held this snowmobile suit for Brandon. This was one of the very few things I had kept of Todd's. I couldn't believe the LORD would want me to give up this "special" snowsuit I had saved all these years. The thought came again, "Put the snowmobile suit in." I walked over and took it off the hanger. I looked at the tag inside. It was a man's size small. When Todd died, he was six feet tall. How long had I been keeping this? Brandon wasn't quite three years old when Todd died. Even now, he wasn't big enough for this suit.
I decided it was time to part with this "special" snowmobile suit I'd been saving. I took it off the hanger and laid it lovingly on top of a bag of other clothes for the mission.
Bill's old store was closing. Almost everything in the store was gone. Now, they were getting rid of the racks. We knew the mission could use the shelves to hang the clothes on. We rented a Ryder truck and loaded several racks in. We stopped by another church to pick up clothes before heading to the mission two hours north.
Since we'd rented this truck, I decided to ride along. Usually, Bill took everything to his store. Then Rose's husband would come in and pick the things up.
We drove the truck to the store that day and met Rose's husband there. He jumped in the truck to give us directions to the church where the mission was.
It was a cold day in Cleveland. The wind was blowing, and the snow was beginning to fall as we drove into the area where the mission was. Looking around, I saw that this neighborhood differed from the one I knew. As we pulled up in front of the church, I noticed all the windows had bars. The front door had a huge chain going through the handles.
We stopped the truck in front of the church and opened the door. As we left the Ryder truck, a small black man with a big, toothless smile greeted us. He ran over to the truck and offered to help. I looked at this man, and I looked at Bill. I couldn't believe my eyes. This little man had Todd's snowmobile suit on! Tears filled my eyes.
Rose walked into Bill's office the next day and asked, "Did you see the man in the snowsuit at the mission?" When Bill said he had, Rose said, "You know Bill, there's a story behind that snowsuit." Rose went on to tell Bill how this little homeless man was always around to help. Rose said that the day this snowsuit came in, he had picked up the bag, and the snowsuit fell at his feet. He picked it up and asked if he could try it on. Rose told Bill that she thought it was "rather foolish" that a grown man would want a one-piece snowsuit like this, but she told him to go ahead and try it on. When he tried it on, it fit perfectly! He told Rose that he had wanted a snowsuit like this all his life, and now he finally had one.
When Bill came home and told me this story, the LORD spoke to my heart and said, "Kay, you were wondering why you were saving that snowmobile suit all these years; now you know!" All these years, I'd thought I was saving this special snowmobile suit for our son, Brandon. I knew I was saving it for a precious child of God who had always wanted one.
