Chapter 14

“You guys need some help?” the man asks.

I stop and look at Dad. It’s great that this guy is offering to help. It’s also totally unexpected. BFC has strict policies about who can join the team. There’s an interview process, because BFC wants hardworking people who possess the ability to do the job correctly and the compassion to do it for free. They want talented experts with a strong work ethic. Then there’s me. I get to volunteer too.

“You’ll have to talk with Mr. Scott,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Bob,” the homeless man says.

“No way!” I say. “We have the same shirt and the same name.”

Mr. Scott hears us talking and comes over.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

My dad introduces him to Bob.

“Well, Bob,” Mr. Scott says. “We’re volunteering our time to help remodel this place. Do you have any construction experience?”

Have you ever heard the saying “Never judge a book by its cover”? Some books have boring covers, but then you open them up and discover they’re interesting on the inside. Other books have amazing covers, but you open them up and there are math problems inside. So you should never judge a book by its cover, and you shouldn’t do that with people either. Bob is a great example of this.

Bob tells us how he used to work for a construction company until he got sick and couldn’t work. He lost his job and his health insurance. His medical bills wiped out his bank account. Then he got kicked out of his apartment and couldn’t get hired anywhere else. Bob wasn’t a lazy person looking for free handouts; he was a guy with a lot of talents who was going through a difficult time.

Mr. Scott puts Bob straight to work. Like most people with his name, he’s amazing! Bob knows how to repair the baseboard along the wall that I knocked off when my skateboard got away from me. Bob knows how to fix the electrical panel when I trip the power breaker after plugging in my phone . . . plus three other things. Bob is great!

With Bob handling some of the big fixes, my dad and I paint the walls in the dining hall in no time.

“Hey,” Mr. Scott says as he inspects our work, “is that a spot on the trim near the ceiling?”

Dad sees it too.

“You clean the paint rollers,” Dad tells me. “I’ll touch up the trim.”

Dad climbs the ladder and sets the paint bucket on the top step. I carry a bunch of rollers to the kitchen to wash them. Since I don’t want to repeat my past mistakes, I carefully watch the ladder. Turns out that I should be watching the floor.

Now, if you’ve never painted walls, let me explain how it works. First, you pour paint into these big flat tin plates called “roller trays.” Then you grab a roller brush and roll it around in the roller tray to get paint all over your roller brush—or your shoe if you accidentally step in the roller tray. Evidently, it works for both.

While I’m carefully avoiding the ladder, I step right into a roller tray! My foot slips on the paint and sends the roller tray shooting off behind me. I don’t have time to worry about that, however, because I’m busy stumbling forward flinging a bunch of wet paint rollers everywhere.

I run around picking up all the rollers, but the dining hall floor—thanks to my one paint-covered shoe—now looks like a one-legged person has hopped all around it.

This is when Mr. Scott comes back to the dining hall. Judging by the look on his face, he isn’t expecting to stumble over a roller tray full of paint in the entryway. He flings the rest of the paint all over the floor. Actually, that’s not completely true. A lot of the paint also gets on his pants.

To make things worse, he’s carrying a bucket of nails. The nails spill onto the paint-soaked floor. And that’s when Mrs. Michelle walks out of the kitchen with her music.

I know there’s a lot going on right now, but I have to stop and tell you about another BFC tradition. Mrs. Michelle is Mr. Scott’s wife. (I don’t know why they have different last names.) She’s in charge of lunch, so she’s really my favorite person at BFC. Mrs. Michelle always lets us know when it’s lunchtime by blaring a song. She plays music through an antique thing called a “boom box.” A boom box is like a smartphone, only it’s the size and weight of a baby elephant. Its sole purpose is to play music really loud. Mrs. Michelle loves playing loud music when lunch is ready.

Okay, we’re all caught up now. Back to the chaos.

Mrs. Michelle walks in blasting a song from her favorite Christian radio station. It’s a great song to listen to if there’s not a lot going on at the time. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those times.

“Come and get it, boys!” she yells over the music. “It’s time for lun—”

Mrs. Michelle pauses as soon as she sees the paint-and-nail-covered floor and her paint-covered husband. Then, like everyone else in the room, her eyes turn to me. The song continues to play loudly, so there’s really only one thing I can do.

I pull my shirt up over my head and make my face belly sing along! Mrs. Michelle starts to laugh. So does my dad. Actually, he laughs so hard that the ladder starts shaking and the paint bucket falls off the top rung.

Dad really needs to be more careful.

The point of all this is that Bob also knows how to clean paint off floors. This guy can do anything! And the best part is that after lunch Mr. Scott offers Bob a job at his construction company.

God’s timing is perfect. If Bob hadn’t walked in for some water and I hadn’t slipped on some paint, he probably wouldn’t have gotten this new job. Of course, Bob’s willingness to help out and his strong work ethic didn’t hurt.

“It’ll be nice to have a Bob around who I don’t have to monitor all the time,” Mr. Scott says.

Mr. Scott has another employee named Bob?

I don’t know that, but I do know God sometimes blesses us when we help each other out.