Small acts of kindness can go a long way towards helping a person thrive.
The little girl in a tattered, red dress looked up at me with puppy dog eyes; her hand held out with fingers extended. She might have been 5-years old but barely 3 feet tall. We were in the Philippines, downtown Dumaguete, where many indigenous people find themselves homeless. It was very late at night.
“Wow, you’ve got that look down pat,” I thought, coldly suspecting that any money given would go directly into the purse of her handlers. I was shocked by my own heartlessness.
“What do you want?”
Still looking up and without even blinking, she whispered, “Sapatos po?”.
My eyes widened. “Ano ba? Anong gusto mo?” I repeated the question gently in Tagalog to be sure I heard her correctly.
“Sapatos po,” she replied pointing to her bare, scabby feet that splayed on the black asphalt street.
“Jesus Christ!” I cried, now convicted. The words sounded like a curse because I was outraged at the neglect I was seeing in this child before me. But deep down, I prayed for forgiveness for myself, and mercy for the kid with the broken feet.
On the street corner across from us, a small public fountain shot streams of water into a coin-filled pool. Kitty-corner from us, a man stood in the gaping front of a clearance shop ready to draw the roll-top shutters down for the night.
“Sige, go wash your feet in the fountain and then come find me,” I said heading for the shop to catch it before it closed.
The shopkeeper had his cane in hand to pull down the rolling aluminum door as I ducked in and called to a clerk for assistance. Using what Tagalog I knew, we found a pair of sandals about the size needed for my new little friend. It was a discount bin… about 40 Pesos a pair. That’s less than a buck in our home currency.
When I looked up the girl was there; feet cleaner, though still grimy, but with a smile that might as well have come from Christ himself.
Before I knew it, two more little kids were in the store – maybe siblings, maybe cousins – but clearly related.
By now, we were the only customers in the store and clerks from all over the store were joining in the hunt for sandals for the shoeless waifs.
I knew we had to leave before word got out and the store filled with more “family members”, but in that moment I knew that my pocket of change had brought more joy to us all than every espresso I’d had for myself that week.
