Shlichus can be folded and easily put into your pocket to take anywhere!

B”H

I don’t plan on officially going on shlichus, but I and every Jew have the responsibility and the ability to be a shliach wherever. That’s the great thing that Chabad teaches; that you use your everyday life to perform it.

You never know what or who you might bump into in a seemingly unfortunate circumstance. On the first day of Pesach a while back my friend Yitzy and I decided we’d swing by the old age home and drop off some matzah and hagaddas. The truth is we didn’t decide to do it because it was right or anything. We were simply incredibly bored and needed an excuse to get out. So we got our excuse.

Arizona gets hot. And the home turned out to be two miles away. But we had already taken it upon ourselves to do it and the fact was we like the whole idea anyway. We trudged through the unforgiving Arizona sun with our bag of matzah and about a dozen hagaddas. When we finally arrived at the place, they promptly refused us entry. They claimed that it would make the non-Jewish residents uncomfortable. Well what about the time they have Christmas program and the like? Doesn’t that make the Jewish occupants uncomfortable? Naturally no one is willing to consider that. None-the-less the stubborn woman at the desk (who looked like she ought to be in the home herself) would not let us give out matzah or even hagaddas though we had walked all that way. To say the least, we were far from happy about having to simply turn around and go home in the heat. It meant the whole trip was pointless.

Because of the sun we took a slight detour through as shady park. It was quite nice but it meant we had to correct our path to get back on the road. At the end of the park we decided to take a shortcut through the field to get on the road faster. In the middle of the field was a man flying some interesting remote-control airplanes. We cut through the field, politely keeping our distance from the mini-pilot, when were heard “Gut Yomtif!” being shouted at us. That was something we did not expect at all. We went over to him to see what was up. He turned out to be Jewish, with a wife and kids to boot, and was just about to pack up and leave when he saw us. He said he was interested in his Jewish roots and had been to a temple or two. Of course we dutifully pointed him in the direction of our local Chabad and invited him to come for services. We gave him matzah and hagaddas just in time for the Seder that night. Well, at least the day wasn’t a total waste. But it doesn’t stop there.

Two weeks went by and he never showed. All well, so much for our invitation. But then one Friday night, there he was. We had told the community about “the man in the field” and he quickly received a warm welcome and got acquainted. It turned out he was an artist that did shows and was also the prop manager for films. He had worked on “The Kingdom” right here in AZ. Then I Yitzy and I went back to NY for yeshiva and that was the last I heard.

A few weeks later I came back to AZ for the summer. On the second Shobbos that I was home, there he was! He had been coming more and more and didn’t like having to drive on Shobbos. So he decided to move right into our community! Now our little community had a new family with a bunch of new kids. After moving in and no longer having to drive on Shobbos, he and his family decided to keep all of Shobbos, keep kosher, wear a kippah and tzitzis, dress stznius, send the kids to a Jewish school, and all manner of religious lifestyle. It further developed into the discovery that they or their parents or something had not received a proper conversion and are currently in the process of becoming proper Jews. They’ve since been an active family in our community.

If the old age home had just let us in so we wouldn’t have “wasted” out time, none of that would have happened. That and had we not been so bored to go out in the first place, had it not been so darn hot (causing us to take the route through the park), had he not decided to fly planes on that day in that field, and not for a dozen other small variables, well, the coming Pesach he and his family might just be flying airplanes with no idea who they really are as Jews. You don’t have to be a shliach to be a shliach.