So much worse than I thought

My BlackBerry is getting crankier and crankier, and it's getting harder and harder to get good reception with it, which means the kids have gotten used to saying something to me and then getting back an answer that makes no sense at all...because I completely misunderstood what they said. And up until now it's just been alternately either moderately annoying or moderately amusing.

But some misunderstanding are worse than others, and a couple of days I got it very badly wrong indeed, and unfortunately it wasn't until today that I found out that I had everything garbled. When Miss Damaris called me on Thursday with the tragic news of her dad's death, her first words -- I thought -- were, "Mr. Pierce, I was just calling to let you know that there's been an accident, a tragedy in my family, and my dad was killed." And so I hopped on the blog and asked you guys to pray for her dad, who had been killed in a car accident. Well, I don't know what it really is that she said when I thought she said "accident" (maybe she said "tragedy" twice? that's about all I can come up with), but she certainly didn't really call it an "accident," because it was nothing of the kind. Silvia's husband, Damaris and Danny's dad -- he was murdered.

Without going into much detail -- for after all my friends have asked only to be prayed for, not to be blogged about -- Lupe (for that was his name) was a lawyer, and he was murdered by one of his own clients, who got angry when Lupe came to ask for the money the guy owed him. So however much you've been praying for them already...double or triple or quadruple it. I couldn't imagine what they were going through when I thought it was just a car wreck; but for Lupe to have been murdered by one of the very people he had tried to help...if you're one of Lupe's kids, how are you supposed to deal with that?

I took some spaghetti and garlic bread over there tonight and wound up staying longer than I intended, just listening to Damaris talk about her dad. I wish you could have heard the love in her voice when she talked about him. Pain, too, of course, but mostly love. Most of what she said, naturally, I have to consider sort of private, but one thing I imagine she wouldn't mind you guys knowing is that Lupe never forgot how tough it was for him when he first got to America, and so even after he had become a successful lawyer he would frequently go back to where the day laborers hung out and find an excuse to help a couple of them out. And when she talked about how charming he was and how everybody liked him, and how he was always cheerful even when he had had a crappy day...well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree; she could have been talking about either herself or Danny, and in particular there's no question where Daniel got that pure-silver tongue of his.

Well. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him. There aren't many people in the world I like more than I like his two kids, and there's obviously a whole bunch of their daddy in 'em. In the meantime, Lupe Galván will be in my prayers along with the rest of my family. And I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd remember him sometime in yours as well -- along with the friends and (especially) family he was snatched away from.