> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Dianne Verporter 
> Sent:	Tuesday, April 11, 2000 2:03 PM
> To:	Anita Merrell (E-mail); Cathy Notusre (E-mail); Dana (E-mail);
> Jessie Evatt (E-mail); Jimmy (E-mail); Lisa (E-mail); Melton Straton
> (E-mail); Pastor Bob (E-mail); Pastor Shane (E-mail); Ricia (E-mail)
> Subject:	FW:  Nice Story
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Hello everyone!
> 
> I hope that all of you are having a blessed  day and that it only gets
> better.  Hope you enjoy this story that was just sent to me. .  
> 
> May the Lord touch each of you in a special way.
> 
> THE OLD FISHERMAN
> Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns
> Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.  We lived downstairs and
> rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic.  One summer
> evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door.
> I opened it to see a truly awful looking man.  "Why, he's hardly taller
> than my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped
>  shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face-lopsided from
> swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said,
>  "Good evening.  I've come to see if you've a room for just one night.  I
> came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, 
> and  there's no bus 'til morning."  He told me he'd been hunting for a
> room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a
>  room.  "I guess it's my face...I know it looks terrible, but my doctor
> says with a few more treatments..."  For a moment I hesitated, but
>  his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the
> porch.  My bus leaves early in the morning." I told him we
>  would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and
> finished getting supper.  When we were ready, I asked the old man if
>  he would join us.  "No thank you.  I have plenty."  And  he held up a
> brown paper bag.  When I had finished the dishes, I went
> out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes.  It didn't take a long
> time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into
> that tiny body.  He told me he fished for a living to support his
> daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly
>  crippled from a  back injury.
> 
>   He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
> preface with a thanks to God for a blessing.  He was grateful that no pain
> accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer.  He
> thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.  At bedtime, we put
> a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning,
> the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch.
> He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as
> if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the
> next time I have a treatment?  I won't put you out a bit.  I can sleep
> fine in a chair."
> He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home.
> Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind."  I
> told him he was welcome to come again.
> And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning.
> As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had
> ever seen.  He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so
> that they'd be nice and fresh.  I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m.  and I
> wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
> In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that
> he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
> Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery;
> fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every
> leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail
> these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
> When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment
> our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning.
> "Did you keep that awful looking man last night?  I turned him away!
> You can lose roomers by putting up such people!" Maybe we did lose roomers
> once or twice.  But oh!  If only they could have known him, perhaps their
> illness' would have been easier to bear.
> I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we
> learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with
> gratitude to God.  Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse.
> As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a
> golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms.  But to my great surprise, it
> was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.  I thought to myself, "If this
> were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"  My friend
> changed my mind.  "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how
> beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in
> this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in the
> garden." She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was
> imagining just such a scene in heaven.  "Here's an especially beautiful
> one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old
> fisherman.  "He won't mind starting in this small body."  All this
> happened long ago-and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must
> stand.
> 
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> The LORD does not look at the things man
> looks at. Man looks at the outward
> appearance, but the LORD looks at the
> heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
> 
>