Home > Mission to Amsterdam > Archives > 2008 > April > 19 > Entry
Apples and Addiction
An apple hangs from the tree in the garden outside the Shelter Jordan. The tree isn’t an apple tree, but I’ll get back to that.
John is one of my favorite people here at the hostel. He came to work at the Shelter Jordan for a month as a cleaner after working at the Shelter City for a month. John is legally blind. He jumped out of a 5th story window when he saw a little girl drowning in a pool below and couldn’t get anyone to save her. He jumped to save her, but he missed the pool. His face was shattered along with several of his other bones. I have never met anyone so chivalrous or with such a heart as John’s. He is a 44-year-old Hungarian. His broken English frustrates him because he fights for the Cross fervently and sometimes doesn’t have the right words.
His life is a testimony to me. John comes to mop the floor when I am finishing my sleeper shift at two in the morning. It isn’t his job, and he should be sleeping because he actually has to get up early to go to work. But he comes in and takes the mop from me and pushes me out of the kitchen. When I say ‘Thank You!” he gets a funny look on his face and says, ‘Don’t say that.’
John is a paradox. He can be tremendously serious one moment, trying to convince you that The God will give you a miracle to help you see Him, and the next minute, he is copying everyone’s sound effects and using fruit to make antlers on his head. For Lukas, he says ‘OmAha,” because Lukas can’t say “Omaha” right. For Elizabeth he makes a siren noise, because she told a story and made that noise one day.
Last night, John wanted a fifth coffee, but the night before, his heart had been racing from too many coffees, so we made a deal that he should only drink two a day. We shook on it. He came up and begged for his fifth coffee, and I firmly said “No” and offered him a hot chocolate, instead. He gave me a five-year-old-boy-begging-for-a-cookie look and leaned forward, pleading with his eyes.
“Please Kelsey!” he begged.
“No, John. We shook on it. You promised,” I said. He grabbed my neck and kissed it! Silly Old Man.“No,” I said, again, and pushed a hot chocolate across the counter.
The apple on the tree outside is some kind of reminder of original sin.
I just laugh every time I see it. I will forever think of a blind beggar with an intense coffee addiction.
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