After thirty years of working with the world’s poor and hungry I have learned that the gifts they offer me are often far more valuable than what my efforts provide for them. Being receptive to our sisters and brothers who live in poverty opens us to receive numerous deep truths we might otherwise never experience.

One of the defining moments in my own call to serve the poor occured in 1968 on a tiny, unamed island in the Inland Sea of Japan. I was in the Marines, doing volunteer mission work with an independent Christian missionary. Our team included the missionary, five Marines, and four Japanese Christians. We lived on a 44 foot World War II Japanese minesweeper, and travelled from island to island.

Many of those we visited had never met an American, and many had never heard of Christianity. But, I will never forget one special lady. She gave me a gift I still treasure to this day.

The entire village thought that Sue Ono was a witch. Frail and elderly, she lived in isolation near the edge of the sea in a small, dirt-floored hut with a thached roof. Several months earlier she had become a Christian, the first on her island to do so. She was to be our last stop before leaving the island.

She was thrilled and filled with gratitude at our appearance. Her little hut was far too small for all of us to enter, but her hospitality was as beautiful as her spirit. When she sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” for us in her thin, cracking, Japanese, I wasn’t the only Marine with tears in my eyes.

Her hut was almost completely bare. There was a sleeping mat and a few clothes. Her entire food supply was on the floor next to her bed; four tangerines and a jar of pickled squid.

The gift I still carry from Sue Ono is the memory of her hospitality and love. As we prepared to leave she reached down and picked up her jar of squid and two of her tangerines. She would not allow us to leave without gifts.

Love doesn’t count the cost. How much we give isn’t important. How much we have left is. That is the first gift I was given by this sweet, lovely, impoverished lady. I have receieved many more such gifts from poor brothers and sisters across the years, but her gift is always with me.