i looked at my toes, and quickly looked back up. a dry leaf scattered on the path beside my seat. the trees and falling flowers around me were so pretty! and it was much better scenery than looking down. i’d never been very impressed with my feet.

i looked around me and as usual when I’m alone, was about to scare someone into a conversation. my lips slightly parted when whoooosh i realised the bus came! oh well. i ran off to queue up, in my inexperience thinking it would leave right away. well in between that time – when the bus driver took his smoke and when the bus actually took off – a lot of interesting things happened that shall we say, have never happened to me before.

but there was a woman right in front of me. tired from a day’s work. mouth and head pulled downwards. she scowled when i spoke english, but broke into a wide smile when i tried my mandarin, which is as broken as a baseball-smashed window. we took seats beside each other and between us, had more cheer than the whole bus of worn out people. isn’t it amazing what joy can do!???

we were complete strangers two 10 minutes before, but all that changed only 10 minutes later. we laughed over stories as we got to know each other. everything made more hilarious cos of the fact we were translating everything in every imaginable way. she took the same bus everyday. she was going the stop after mine and we both came from big families. she had great mandarin, i had well, not so great mandarin. our roles switched when it came to english. but towards the end of our journey, i also discovered most intriguingly that she didn’t have a particular faith. directly translated, her faith was, “i don’t think anything, i just go home and sleep”.

my heart longed to tell her of the faith that hinted in everything I was talking to her about, my family, my life..a voice in me said “you can’t explain anything in mandarin doofus! don’t try!” and in utter regret, i listened to it until we reached the bus stop. my heart panged (if there’s such a thing!) with regret and i quickly told her that i believed in God, yada ya..and ended with a lame: “hey you should too” or something along those lines. she said she would…

my heart dropped when i realised i was never going to see her again, hadn’t even gotten her phone number, hadn’t even given mine to her. i had just missed a chance of a lifetime. because i was scared!

since then i’ve been trying not to miss out on joining the work God’s doing – i’ve been a scaredy poke alot of the time, but His grace is sufficient in making me bolder! there are a few fun instances where tracts were given out in the funniest of times..but i still have a long way to go. I’m *still* in the midst of reading that life changing book called One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven by Mark Cahill but wow! i’m not going to live like a wimp! how can i truly love people and be afraid of letting them know there is only a heaven & a hell and there’s a 100% chance that they’re going to die and go to one of those two destinations?

“As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things!” – Romans 10:15b

today i looked down at my toes again and realised hey, my feet are getting kinda prettier. slightly!