Soul
Copyright © 2016, 2018-2020 by VeryWellAged
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Prologue
The Philippines, 2015
Dad, ignore them. I will deal with it.
Why, what’s this about?
We were sitting at a McDonalds at the mall. My daughter was home for a few days between semesters at Adamson University. It was good to see her. It’s hard to explain. I guess she will never be the ravishing beauty that her mother is, but I am to blame for that, as she got half her genes from me. Still whenever I see her, I feel lighter, happier. When she is gone from the house, there is a hole in it that refuses to be filled.
I rarely eat out and would never have chosen McDonalds, but if my daughter wanted it, then that is all I needed to know.
Anyway, there was this kid going from table to table. He looked about my daughter’s age and seemed neatly dressed, respectable. But at each table he handed a piece of paper to the person sitting there. I was intrigued.
Really Francine, what do you know about this?
Dad, he will claim to be a college student who needs money today or he will be forced to leave school. His parents have a medical emergency, or they lost their job… anyway, it’s a lie. The money is going to a church. It’s a scam.
Sure enough, the young man came to our table as I was finishing off my Quarter Pounder with Cheese. He did just as my daughter had claimed he would do. She sent the fellow off after telling him that I am angry that he was soliciting here. If he had a problem, she told the young man, I had told her that he should ask his uncles and aunts for help. To not be a beggar.
He left. I had not been happy with how she dealt with it, but didn’t want to criticize her. Anyway it stuck with me for a few weeks. Francine was back in school and it was still playing back repeatedly in my brain. There was something about how we had handled it that just didn’t seem right. Why, I did not really know.
I did some digging. Francine had told me the name of the church. The church had an online presence. Their staff was listed on the website, with email addresses and phone numbers, as were all aspects of their supposed mission. Frankly the operation gave me the creeps.