“It’s so I can practise at home”

Best Friends

I heard a very heart-warming story yesterday afternoon.

My dad-in-law is very involved with a lovely local Christian family at his church who live in a newly developed township called Cosmo City. To give you a little background – Cosmo City has been built with different types of homes  – some are privately bought, while others are what we call here, RDP homes.

Those are homes built by the government to alleviate the hardship of folks living in corrugated shacks which are prevalent all over the place here. These RDP homes are very basic, two  to three rooms and an inside bathroom which is sheer luxury after having lived in a corrugated ‘box’ on top of thousands of others in the same position as yourself.

This lovely family have a few young children in it and my dad-in-law has become like a dad to them.  He took them to a local Spur, which is very much  a family steakhouse franchise, and has various playing areas.  These restaurants are usually very noisy and full of fun and laughter. The waiters come and sing a happy birthday when the occasion arises and they also sing a version here called Sosholoza, which is Zulu and truly African in sound along with all this, they bring an ice-cream with a sparkler on the top and the kids just love it.

To get back to my story – After the children had had their meal, my dad watched the one very young lad clean his fork and knife in his serviette and then pop them into his pocket. Upon my dad asking him what he was doing, he replied, “It’s so I can practise at home.”

My dad has obviously been teaching the wee ones about table manners and so this was this lad’s way of making sure he was fully prepared next time he came out with my dad.  These kids have cutlery at home, but this set was obviously earmarked as ‘special’ to this little one. The innocence of a child is just something that melts me time after time.

This little boy took it for granted that my dad would take him out again and wanted to make him proud next time when dad would see how well he was able to use the cutlery.

It left me chuckling all afternoon!

In one of Lyn’s recent posts called Nothing more precious, over at Svdbygrace, she tells the story of her young nephew at prayer time, thanking the Lord for….. refrigerators! I also chuckled all afternoon at that too.

Ah it melts your heart, it sure does.