"So, anyway. Your father had quite a ministry of hospitality."
"Nonstop. Everyone was welcome to our home. Dad was a very good cook, and there was always a big pot of something on the stove or in the oven. He didn't exactly invite folks for dinner. They would drop by for coffee and be invited to stay. We were dubbed the ministry of the revolving door. We didn't get a lot of support from the church, unfortunately. This was seen by Dad's colleagues as rather an eccentric hobby of his than real ministry. But it was real ministry."
"You must have had some memorable guests."
"Oh, we did. actually, I must have been just six years old (Dad was already in his theological training), when for a while we had this guy in his twenties coming around. I didn't know this at the time, but he worked in the survival sex trade, as a transvestite prostitute. I didn't really understand what his situation was, and Dad tended to shelter me from some of the more brutal realities of some of our frequent visitors I found him rather strange looking. He had a very handsome face, film star handsome, but he plucked his eyebrows, giving his face quite an odd look. He seemed kind of shy and withdrawn, but he also seemed to like me, and used to enjoy talking to me, asking me about how I liked school, what my favourite games were, and he talked a lot about his mom and his aunt, and I was just fascinated because I no longer had a mom, and had never had an aunt."
"How did he find your place?"
"Dad always had an interesting set of contacts. One of his friends in seminary had a friend attending the evangelical theological campus nearby. Apparently Aaron, our Aaron, even back then was involved in a kind of street ministry to gay people on the street and sex workers, and Dad was invited along with some others to join him on a few tours downtown. That is how Dad met Kenny, the transvestite hooker..."
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