Once again we had our visit from Ed Lee, the owner of the buildings we occupy. Ed travels from China, where his factory is, to the U.S where he makes a number of stops at his customer’s places of business, and when gets to New England he stops by here to say hello and catch up on our progress.

Ed has been a benefactor for our ministry ever since he donated monies to help us purchase our truck ten years ago. Since that time, he purchased the buildings we currently use, helped us purchase our point of sale system and funded our efforts to hire a manager. Aside from these contributions, Ed has had a tremendous impact upon Kathy and I in the areas of business, church, and family.

This year, we gave Ed and his fellow travelers an Urban Missionaries of Our Lady of Hope sweatshirt. You would have thought we gave them a million dollars judging by the smiles and the number of times each of them said thank you. It both surprised and tickled Kathy and I to see the reactions

I also gave Ed one of our customer loyalty cards for the LittleStore. Ed was taken by surprise and showed us just how much he appreciated the loyalty card when he immediately took out his wallet, opened it up and took a card the was right on top and replace it with our card, patted it and said, “I am going to show this to everyone.”  We all laughed.

We then went to have breakfast at a local diner where we could talk. Ed always wants to know how things are going, how are the people who work for us doing, and what is going on in the lives of the people we serve. Kathy and I then proceed to tell him about everything we are doing plus our dreams for the future of the ministry. We consider Ed a God-send. One sent by God to help us on this road we travel.