A Beautiful Woman and the Homeless Man

Written from Linda’s perspective:

We had a good long sleep and arose at 6:40 AM!  Today is our daughter Charissa’s birthday and we called and sang happy birthday to her on her voice mail.  Wish we could have been with her to celebrate.

We prepared to go and meet Ramone at the Merced-mini storage unit but stopped on our way at the Starbucks on Main street for some coffee and scones.  They have keypads on the bathrooms there and one must be “walked in to the bathroom” by an employee!

There was a homeless man looking at a newspaper as we parked.  When I got out of the car, Tim heard him say, “There’s a beautiful woman”.  I knew he was talking but didn’t pick up on what he said.  Tim decided to purchase a 20.00 Starbucks gift card for him and wanted to give it to him as we left.  We had to go find him around the corner.  He refused to take the gift card.  The local shoe repair man came to the car and explained that he wouldn’t take anything from anyone.  He had tried to give him shoes but he refused as well.  He gets his food from the garbage cans around the restaurants. 🙁

We went to the storage unit where we met Juan and Ramone with a truck and trailer.  They have a thrift store on Main Street and were very pleasant guys.  They told us that they had sold a great deal of Noreen’s possessions which they took last November.  Her paintings were hot items.  Much of her stuff was being bought by co-workers and friends who recognized her work.  One co-worker broke down in tears when she found Noreen’s name-tag from the place where she worked alongside her.  Noreen’s paintings have their own hashtag on the thriftshop’s on line store.  They invited us to come by the store and look to see if there was any jewelry we could use in our e-bay store The Jeweled Page.

After loading the stuff in the trailer, we headed out to the old homestead.  There was someone working in the house and so we just drove on.  It looked just about as it did the last time we were there.

We headed back to Main Street and the Thrift Shop.  They were not open yet so since we had a gift card to Starbucks that was given to us by a homeless man, we decided to get some iced coffee drinks while we waited.

When we returned to the store, it was still not open but they were in the back and let us in.  We bought some jewelry and they gave us a really good deal!  We parted with these friends, expressing again our appreciation for their help.

We headed for the Merced Mall and took advantage of a sale ad JC Penney to get Tim some badly needed shorts and shirts.  I also found some sandals at Payless.  We ate at the food court with some food from the Panda Express and Tim found a stand that sold large cups of Pineapple and Lime drink … it was good!

We went to the cinema and saw Maleficent.  It was really good.  We were an hour early but we enjoyed sitting in the air conditioning as we waited.  Tim bought me a huge bucket of popcorn and a large drink that lasted for the entire movie!

We got back to our room this evening and shared some jam & crackers * cheese with water.  Tim is working on listing some jewelry that he brought with us and I am going to start a new book.  I brought three books with me by Frances Arnold.  They were written before I was born.  The first in 1946, the second in 1957.  We got these in boxes of books from Paul Thyren from a dear lady who passed away in his church in Adel WI.

When we leave in the morning the Merced-Winton saga will be done.  We will probably not be out this way again unless the Lord provides ministry opportunities in this area.  Tim is rather sad about that because he has come to love the church in Atwater as he has had many opportunities to minister to them over the years.