Slipping and sliding

Slipping and sliding

Falling and crying

Slipping and sliding

Hurting and regretting

Slipping and sliding

Hungry and angry

Looking and hoping

Trying and waving

Nobody was helping

Looking and hoping

for warmth and hope

and when no hope was left

on a verge of giving up

a bright shining light

a stranger in the night

a warmth soul and heart

stopped and guided me

back to where

I was longing to be

~ Nil

On a winter evening in mid January 1990, I arrived in Wasau Airport in Wisconsin.

The promise of a pick up from the Foreign Student Office in University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point was futile. In the letter of acceptance, they said they would pick me up after had faxed them my pick up time and date, which I had done about a month back.

I arrived, and I waited, and nobody came to pick me up. I tried to call the number provided but it was weekend and nobody was anywhere near the office to pick calls up.

So, I went to the taxi counter after waiting for about one and a half hours and took a taxi.

The female taxi driver knew which residence hall to take me too and duly drove the half and hour trip from the airport to the hall as the winter afternoon got darker and darker.

As we arrived at the hall, the lights were off and there was nobody in sight. The weather was extremely cold for a Malaysian who had just come from the warm tropical climate to the cold winter of Wisconsin.

The taxi driver was nice enough to call the campus security who came and guided us to the right hall.

As I entered the right hall, I was given a room by the hall director. After a while, in the dark evening of winter, I felt hungry and asked the hall manager for directions to a diner nearby.

I was given some basic directions, but being in a new place, I got lost.

I was wearing the wrong pair of shoes for winter and in my desperation to find a diner or the hall again, I got lost more and I slipped and slide and fell on my butt close to twenty times.

There was no life in the street I was at, the wind grew cold and bitter and I was wondering if I would die in this cold winter night of frostbite.

I then saw a church, and there was an evening service that had just completed. I asked for help, I ask for guidance but nobody would stop to help this colored boy in this mid-western town.

I felt that even if churchgoers would not be kind enough to help a lost stranger, they were as cold and bitter as the cold and bitter wind that was going down my spine from the lousy winter jacket I had on. My socks were wet from all the snow and my feet were wet and numb.

Then a bright car light shined on me and a stranger in the car asked me if I needed help. It was a new town, I did not know anyone and I was not about to get in the car with a strange white man in a town filled with cold bitter hearts. At least that is my feelings at that time.

 He then introduced himself as the assistant basketball coach from the University, he showed me his tag and he again asked me if I needed help.

I told him in tears that it was my first day, I was looking for some food and then go back to this hall which I no longer remember the name. I told him I had arrived a few hours back and now was walking aimlessly in a town I barely knew.

He told me he thought that he knew which hall I would be in as his basketball players who had to come in early were also staying there. He said he will take me to the hall so that I could try my key and if that did not work, he will call the campus security to help me.

As I reached the hall, he waited for me to try the key on the main door and to my delight it worked.

God send me this angel when I was lost in the streets of little Stevens Point and despite my hunger, I was grateful to be back to the right place.

The next day I gave an earful to the foreign student office and about a month later, I went to the athletics department to look for the assistant basketball coach. I found him and I thanked him again for saving me that cold winter night in January.

God has blessed me with many miracles and living angels as well as guardians and angels from the spiritual world and I am grateful.

Take care and be well.