Back to America

A wake up call at 6:30 A.M., amounting to a lack of 5 hour's worth of sleep. A 13 hour flight of endless bore, tire, and incessant kicking/poking behind my seat. I arrived at JFK by 11:30, but didn't make it to my temporary stay until 8:00PM. I shared four bags that each weighed at least 45~50lbs with my sister. Hardly anything to eat once I reached here. All this would have been so much more painful, gruesome, and agonizing if it weren't for an encounter. My sister and I were on our way from Penn Station (NY) to Trenton (NJ), when a stranger inquired, "Do any of you go to F&M?" At first I scrunched my eyebrows at such a random question, but then as I looked down, I realized I was wearing my F&M shirt. It turned out that he was an F&M alumni '95. The three of us began to make small-talk for a little while, but I didn't expect anything more from my encounter with this fellow. With only a few seconds left from the train reaching Trenton, the friendly stranger suddenly offered a ride to both my sister and my residential. I couldn't stop stammering or keep my eyes focused at one point for longer than a second. My brain screamed NO NO NO THIS IS A STRANGER at first, but my sister and I nonetheless contented. For a long while, we were both phased at the pleasant surprise, but we still felt a little nervous. It turned out that my sister's college was half-an-hour away from his own destination. Nevertheless, he magnanimously insisted that he take her to her college. Once we reached Bryn Mawr College, we were prepared to retrieve our belongings and find our way around the campus by ourselves. But the man insisted that he come along, saying that the campus was too big to work around and he'd might as well take us to the places where my sister needed to go in order to initiate her orientation. The whole time, one thought continued to scratch the surface of my skull: "HOW IS IT THAT SOMEONE CAN BE AS HOSPITABLE AS THIS TO TWO STRANGERS THAT HE'S NEVER MET BEFORE IN HIS LIFE UNTIL ABOUT AN HOUR AGO??" Once we finally dropped off my sister, it was my turn. On our way to my place, he asked me what my plans were for the next few days before I returned to F&M campus. Then he proposed to meet once more and have dinner before I left.  It was too much at that moment.  I was flabbergasted at the man's colossal generosity. My eyes bulged enough to pop out of their sockets. No words escaped through my mouth. It could never have been sheer luck or pure coincidence that my sister and I met such a man on our way to our stays.

My encounter with the alumni helped realize (at 5:45 AM) that God never places anyone, and I mean anyone, in our lives for no purpose. Every person can influence us in ways so small and big that we hardly notice them. As a butterfly's single flap can alter the weather to bring down a mighty storm upon an unsuspecting city 4000 miles away, so can a single encounter can alter your views, perceptions, ideas, or even life. An encounter with a human being can alter our current lives temporarily, but an encounter with God leaves an everlasting influence and alters our lives permanently.