​A certain evangelist in town organized the restaurants into giving the ministers in the area a breakfast once a month at a different restaurant. Of course, they had to be big enough to seat about a hundred people, but he pulled the plan together. At one of these breakfasts I sat next to a man I had never met. He had his notebook open to a page where he had written the initials S.I.D.A. This is French for A.I.D.S. I leaned over and told him I knew French, so if he ever needed someone to speak to a French person, I’d be happy to help him.
 
He whispered back that S.I.D.A. is Spanish, and he didn’t know either French or Spanish. We laughed, but he took down my phone number. This was my first encounter with the possibility to speak French to someone, and I wondered if this was why I had taken the intensive French classes just before moving back to the States.

​A friend of mine looked at Jo one day and said, “You would be perfect for my son. I’m going to have him write to you.” He did. He returned home from the Orient with his Marine unit, came to see Jo on Valentine’s Day, and soon after they planned a wedding.
 
Between the wedding and a heavy counseling schedule for John, I gave up all efforts to minister or to raise money. It seemed prudent since all the doors I opened slammed in my face. I wrote, instead, working away at JJ’s computer, as we gave him a new one for graduation, an upgrade he needed for law school.