Mercy for a sojourner

A few months ago I reflected on the various trials of being an alien and sojourner, specifically how we often get taken advantage of in the marketplace.  Well, I had a most amazing, surprising experience the other week that I had to share as counterbalance to my other experiences. 

A couple weeks ago Katie had a dance performance coming up at school.  Her teacher had told me that on the day of the performance Katie needed to come to school dressed a certain way.  And that was pretty much all I understood.  I didn't quite catch any of the specifics of how she should be dressed, except for white shoes and white shorts? Leggings? Tights?  Yeah, didn't catch that part.  But I got the white shoes part.  So one evening we headed over to the market near our house (that place is a blog post unto itself) to look for Katie's shoes.  We were having a really hard time finding shoes that were just plain white with no cartoon character emblazoned on it anywhere.  Finally we found a pair of leather sandals that had enough support that she could dance with them on. (Keep in mind, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be buying, I just know they have to be white.)  So we enter the bargaining process and couldn't get her to go lower than $12 (more than I wanted to pay for a pair of shoes we were only buying for a one-time dance performance....apparently they were some kind of special leather or something....)
The next day we ended up getting our tutor to call Katie's teacher to find out what exactly she needed (we certainly didn't want our child to face potential embarrassment by showing up unprepared because her parents can't understanding anything!)  Turns out, we bought the wrong kind of shoes, the shoes we needed were actually only about $3.  And the idea of making a return?  A foreign concept here.  Boo.  For most people, this situation probably isn't a big deal, but for me with all of my money/waste issues this kind of a situation really gets at me.  Ah well, an opportunity for my sanctification.  So the next day, I went back to the market to get the shoes we needed...and being the stingy hopeful person I am, I took the newly-purchased shoes along with me, "just in case."  My first stop was the lady we had bought the $12 shoes from.  I figured she might have the shoes we needed and would be a little more likely to give me some of my money back if it were an exchange instead of a straight up return.  So I pleasantly greeted her and managed to explain that I had misunderstood Katie's teacher and we had bought the wrong kind of shoes last night.  I asked her if she had the shoes I needed; unfortunately, she didn't.  Then I took a risk (deep breath) and asked if she would give me my money back if I gave her the shoes back.  She looked at the shoes and asked if they had been worn (they were still sealed in the bag), and then said something I couldn't understand but it was probably something like this is not the way we do things over here, but then she reached into her money pouch and gave me back my money!  If you have any awareness of how things work over here, this was a miracle.  Mercy.  I thanked the lady and told her that if we ever need kids shoes we will come back to her shop, then proceeded to another stall to buy the $3 shoes, and continued to rejoice in wonder all day at the mercy this woman showed to me, a totally undeserving stranger living in a strage land.  I prayed that the Lord would bless her for the kindness she showed.

Is there a stranger in your midst you could bless today?