"You are real"

Every Wednesday Cameron, I and others go to the Roma community to do discipleship with the adults and life skills training and scripture memorization with the kids. Last Wednesday the community was being forced to move from the area of the field they had been squatting in and were unsure where they would move next. We were happy to find them in the same field this Wednesday when we visited. They were allowed to stay in the same field but had to move to a different location within it.
We walked through and talked to familiar faces and were shown the new area they're living. The children and I were about to leave the area to play when a woman called me to come over her tent. The woman's mother was sitting next to her with a pot of vegetables and some bread. When I approached the woman told me to sit and eat with them. I sat down and took some bread from her hand and dipped it into the vegetables and began to eat. Immediately the older woman began crying. I was completely taken off guard and asked my friend to translate for me and see if she was okay. She began talking and said "I see you all come here and you play with the kids and you smile at us but I wanted to know if you were real. And you are real! You are willing to eat from my dirty hands and eat my dirty food! God bless you sweet girl! I know you are real now. You don't look down on me!" I am crying as I type this out and relive this moment. Praise God! We had a very sweet conversation and I was able to share with her my story and how God loves us without hesitation. When Jesus sat at the tables of men, he looked past the hands that served Him and whether they were clean or dirty but rather looked at the heart of man. It's the stain of dirt from sin that Christ looked at and came to clean. Praise God for last night!