Rough Night

5 people showed up for community outreach. We had a rough night. We talked to about 20 people in total and we prayed for about 5. While walking around Nathan Phillips square in downtown Toronto a young lady and her group of about 10 friends from a local Christian school walked up to me boldly and told us that they had run out of food for the homeless and she told us where we could find them. I loved her boldness.

Next time we’ll check out the children in the rougher areas. Hard to believe but Canada has many homeless young children who live on the streets and eat out of garbage cans.

Apple Juice & Other Stuff

I was given a laptop to do a fresh install of win98 (yeah, you wear glasses and everyone thinks you can fix their computer). Well, the person who owned laptop wanted to use a mouse with it, so I went to his house to help install one. That took about 2 minutes, but as I was prepping to leave, I was asked to do some work on his desktop computer. Blah. I hate that. This wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last unless I make some changes. It’s been a long week, and now I have to install a modem as well. With work, school, and church ministry, I’m doing at least 15 hours a day 7 days a week. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

While driving to the bank on Friday night, as soon as I turned on Airport Road off Morning Star, BAM! An accident. I always stick around to see if I can be of any help, but they didn’t need me this time.

Anyway, I stopped for gas, and after, my car wouldn’t start. Some guys helpd me jump start it, and I was off again. I made a few wrong turns here and there and ended up on this old street with really nice houses. I saw this amazing stone house. Every time I see a certain kind of house, a house that’s completely abnormal, it reminds me of old TV shows I used to watch from the 80s and when life was somewhat simpler because I was too young to know any better.

I like apple juice. But I don’t like cold apple juice, I think it’s nasty. I heat it up in the microwave because it’s so delicious that way. When I was around 6, I attended a really nice school called Yorkview Public in Willowdale Ontario (near Bathurst and Finch). I could barely afford to go on any field trips (a common theme in my life), but there was one to an apple orchard that I was able to go to, and on the permission form, parents were asked to give a bit of spending money because the orchard had all kinds of neat products. Well, my parents gave me $1, which they thought was a whole lot of money, and to my family, it really was!

I was the only kid who couldn’t buy anything at all, and my teacher blamed me, like I was 6 and in charge of my finances. I hate when teachers ask stupid questions like, “why didn’t you bring more money?” Umm, well, because I’m 6. “Why didn’t you tell your parents to give you more?” (I don’t know how it works with white people, but with us brown people, if you ‘tell’ your parents to give you more money, you get your skull cracked open plus grounded for a month). Anyway, I really wanted to buy a small jug of apple cider, which all my friends were buying.

Shortly after this incident I started my own business at Yorkview. I would go to a convenience store and purchase gum and other popular candy, and sell it at school, usually at recesses, lunch, and after school. This worked out so well for me, and I was always able to go on field trips and buy stuff. That carried on for a good while, until my mom found more than $40 in my piggy bank (yeah I wasn’t just spending, I was saving, too!), and wondered how a 6 year old got that kind of money. Well, gee mom, I didn’t rob a bank, I’m 6, so I’m not dealing dope, and printers haven’t really been invented yet, so I’m not printing money. I told her I had been buying and re-selling candies for a profit. In return, I got a good hard beating, and for some reason I still don’t understand, my money confiscated. After this, I was back to square one, missing most field trips because we couldn’t afford it and I wasn’t allowed to have control over my own finances. I made excuses to my teachers about why I couldn’t go – standard stuff us poor people say. “I’m sick,” “I forgot to get my permission slip signed,” “I lost the money,” etc.

Fast forward to today, I’m a Christian, many of my family members are converting one by one. Mom comes to visit often and brings me a jug of apple juice, apple cider, and fresh apples to make up for everything.

All of a sudden I don’t care about missed field trips or the insults of well meaning teachers.

– Asif Zamir