Kenneth Smith was homeless when he decided to sit outside an Outback in Texas, but little did he know his life was about to change.
While sitting outside of the Outback, a woman asked him if he was OK, and he answered her honestly. “No, I’m not OK at this time,” he told her, to which she gave him a $100 gift card to Outback Steakhouse so he could have a warm meal, Smith told WFAA in a video interview.
After he went in for a warm meal, Laura, the managing partner, spoke with Smith and decided he shouldn’t have to go without food, Faithwire reports. So, Laura gave him her business card and told him to come back any time. “I said, ‘Hey, I don’t ever want you to want for food or go hungry,'” Laura told WFAA. “I want you to always have somewhere that you can get a warm meal.”
So, Smith returned several times to the restaurant. After five months of coming in and getting a free meal, Smith decided to ask for a job, and Laura gave him one. Now he’s bussing tables for the Outback. However, the story doesn’t end there.
Smith still needed a place to stay and reliable transportation. That’s when Fort Worth Foodies, a Facebook group in Texas with 38,000 members, stepped in. When Laura posted on the group asking if any of them had hotel recommendations, the group did something amazing. According to Faithwire, “Instead of just offering recommendations, many of them pitched in to cover the cost of Smith reserving a room at an Extended Stay hotel for six weeks. They’ve also gifted him more than $2,200, a bicycle, clothes, kitchen items, and groceries.”
In the video, Smith shared that he was thankful that God blessed him with this new beginning. “I think it’s so much of a good blessing,” Smith said. “And it’s wonderful just to have people these days that’ll do things for you. This is a whole new beginning that God has blessed me with. So I’m trying to get on this right, good track that He wants me to stay on.”
Video courtesy: ©WFAA
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Zhenikeyev
John Paluska has been a contributor for Christian Headlines since 2016 and is the founder of The Washington Gazette, a news outlet he relaunched in 2019 as a response to the constant distribution of fake news.