Amigos

You never know who is going to serve as a reminder of God's joy or His presence with us. For me, it has at times been brief encounters with these two men. We see them almost daily as we are walking home from school. They work together at a printing press near our house. The younger man is mentally handicapped and probably in his early 30s. The older man is most likely in his upper 70s. They obviously share a deep friendship.

We look forward to seeing them because the older gentleman is always extremely excited to talk with us. When we are about 30 feet from him, he begins an exaggerated wave and continually says "Hola!" with a huge grin on his face until we get to where he is on the sidewalk. Then, he grabs each of our hands at the same time and shakes enthusiastically and asks us how we are doing. He speaks very quickly and not too clearly, so at times we do not understand a lot of what he is saying, but his joy is contagious.

We asked if we could take a picture of them. The younger man said "gracias" at least six times and the older man said that it would be a great rememberance for us of our friends (them). He said we could hang the picture on our living room wall. That would be interesting! I wish that he would have smiled in the picture. I like his smile -- it is very big and he is missing a lot of teeth.