Hot-spotting connections

So there I was in Tim Hortons, looking through my courses online and doing student-like things such as getting on top of homework and posting my thoughts to my Linguistic' class forum.

It doesn't happen often but when a stranger comes over and says "Hello Shirley, how are you?", I confess every antennae is sweeping the entire perimeter for bugs, spies and secret service agents. (Why would they be spying on me I 'll never know!) I am not a person easily surprised but this is where you insert the emoticon of a wide-eyed, I-just-got-found-out, scared-witless face. But there was something about his face that said "friend" instead of "foe".

I asked how he knew my name. He said he had hacked into my account (my nerves went into bungee-jumping beserk mode again!) then he smiled and said "Shirley's iPhone4" since I was hot-spotting from iPhone to my my laptop. He lifted up his iPhone and his iPad. His companion, an elderly man smiled. His name is Stephen and he introduced his friend Alf, from Queensland, Australia. What ensued was a rather delightful conversation (about work, ministry, Power to Change, ESL and churches) all because he saw my electronic "ad" for a hotspot connection. (Note to self: Should I put my name on the iPhone so everyone knows my name? Hmmm...)

This short dialogue made me think how many ways can one find out about others and how easy was it to have a conversation? After answering his question about what I do for a living, I took a risk by using my observations to suss out who he was. I said he has a demeanor of a pastor to which he looked at me with new eyes. *That's* the look that I get when I use my eyes, ears and heart to look at someone. Tit for tat. He said he was "an evangelist" and we went on to talk about our church backgrounds and even found out we had a mutual friend from a Chinese church by the name of Gideon.

Before I left for class, he said that he knew when he saw me working on my sausage-country-biscuit-and-hot-chocolate, that I was a Christian. Let me be shallow and admit that I was rather suspicious of such a line however, he clarified by saying that Christians are known by the Spirit who lives within them. It made me think and it brought part of a Sunday school song back to mind.

"And they'll know we are Christians by our love..."