In March Charis and I travelled to Washington DC on Amtrak.  Before we even reached Indiana we had a fun moment with a guy across the aisle.  Having just finished our sack dinner we pulled out some Australian Licorice as a treat.  Sensing the prompting of the Holy Spirit I (Heather) reached over the aisle and offered some to our neighbor.  His  response was …”oh no thank y….wait a minute I love black licorice!”  For the next 20 minutes or so we enjoyed hearing him describe falling for licorice while in Amsterdam.  Later during the trip he reached over the aisle and shared his favorite candy form China Town.  This was the start of a fun gateway into enjoying some new “travel friends.”

We met a man from Colorado later that afternoon who ingeniously brought an electric tea pot on board.  We happened to bring some nice Starbucks …so he shared his water we shared our coffee and we swapped stories through the Shenandoah Valley as we approached DC.

In DC at the Cherry Blossom Parade we pulled out a couple of Andes mints and offered them to a beautiful , older African American woman sitting next to us waiting for the parade to start.  We spent the next 90 minutes hearing about her 4 grandchildren and the interesting work she had done as a consultant to universities.

On the way home we shared Andes  mints again with a man on his way to Chicago to house/cat sit for a daughter he had been estranged from for over a decade!  He was tender and vulnerable and it was an amazing privilege to share his victory story!

SO….we are looking forward to more stories like this.  We are thinking San Pellegrino’s would be hard to resist and start up a story  or two.  We will post these stories along the way!

Look for the heading “Sharing Stories” and enjoy the new friendships with us!