Fresh Manna
"You don't understand. Now I'm a chef. I'm no longer a prostitute…" she said as she filmed the interview. I was standing off to the side and had put my hand up to protest when she graciously thanked us. But she had insisted. She said she needed to be able to do that. That was three years ago, after she had completed a culinary course through a Wellspring scholarship.
Last fall she shared her testimony with a group of ministry supporters. She had flown all the way from Cape Town, South Africa, and I took her by the arm and reminded her that she didn't have to do this; she did not owe it to us. She smiled and said she knew that. "I need to do this," she said, "My story is only remarkable if people know God has brought me through." Her hands shook as she walked up onto the platform, but she told a very personal and difficult story in only a few minutes. She concluded by saying it was her dream to own a restaurant some day.
I had worried that morning. A crowded schedule meant she had less time to speak than I had hoped. I should know by now that God will use even a handful of minutes to change our lives. A gentleman in the audience was listening to her words and her heart.
And on April 9, I had the absolute pleasure of attending the grand opening of her restaurant, Fresh Manna, which serves healthy cuisine on a trendy street in Cape Town. She was wearing a new apron over her evening dress and balancing a tray of peppered crab and salmon crostinis.
She gave us the opportunity to be a part of something good; of something bigger than our selves. She enabled us to witness the face of struggle; she revealed the face of courage. She likens herself to the racehorse Seabiscuit, "because everyone had given up on him. But then someone saw something in him and gave him a chance."
She needed to thank us. She needed to tell her story. And I would say, we needed to remember that miracles happen. We needed to see that God could allow us to be part of one. We needed to know that sometimes, a miracle is standing in a green apron behind a restaurant counter and carefully fulfilling our lunch order.
The missionary Eric Liddell was a powerful runner. When his sister protested his running one day, he responded, "But God has made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure."
In the kitchen of a new restaurant, almost exactly halfway around the world, a young mother has that knowledge today as she uses her gifts and lives out a dream. This is because of people like you who support this ministry; it is because a gentleman chose to believe in someone.
Miracles do exist. And we get to know it.
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