I have read this amazing article elsewhere. I can not remember which publication it was or which email I have received. Keep writing and make a difference to other people’s lives!
My very good friend is like frumladygit. She hands out sandwiches, muffins, hot coffee etc to people who are down and out. One never knows who they really are.
On the nights of the seder, when we open our hearts’ to many more guests, one of our son’s goes to a meeting place outside a kosher bakery on a main road and brings home lost souls that have no where to go for the sedarim. For whatever the reason, they have lost contact with their families and are real nebechs. One year, our son brought home a young man (among many others), with very long, dirty scruffy hair and torn trousers, with filthy nails, and not very clean with body odors. Really uncooth. For an absolute second, I was looking around our beautiful seder table, where he can sit and next to whom, when my Father Z’TL (who was a camp survivor) and spoke a heavy-accented English, said with the most beautiful smile and awave of the hand, “come Tatelah, sit next to me! I am the Zaide and I will show you what to do”! My Father Z’TL, (I am his siamese twin (in facial and charachter features, and we thought alike), was the most patient and sever panim yafot type of guy with the most bitachon and emunah. He saw my hesitancy for a second and saved the day. My Father gave him a cappel and spoke to him all night, and explained everything patiently what to do when. This guy was not asked any questions to embarass him, or why he had no contact with his family.
My Father Z’TL got very ill in the summer, and was nifter in Tevet. The following Pesach, after I had lit the licht and was crying buckets, all the menfolk in shul and I was alone with my Mom A’H, there was a knock on the door. I went to answer the door and a young man with nicely cut hair, nice trousers, sports jacket and a kippah was standing there. He asked for The Zaide (Z’TL), and if he could sit next to him. I did not recognize him, but told him he is more than welcome to join us for the sedarim but, unfortunately the Zaide Z’TL passed away. This was the same young man who came the year before. He soon came every Shabbos, and then he decided to go to Yeshiva in Israel and he became frum. He has B’H married and is raising a beautiful B’H family with his ezer kinegdo.
We don’t know the ripple effect that anything we might do will have on the next person.
May we all be zocher to do many mitzvos and maasim tovim and be able to bring back all our brothers’ and sisters’ to do the avodas Hashem!