Merkos Shlichus in action

As you may or may not know, I'm currently on Merkos Shlichus in Litchfield, Connecticut. Faithful readers will recall that this blog got its start about a year ago as a response to the original www.rovingrabbis.com. Later I got a spot on that very same website, and the legend of TRS was born.
The question now facing me is what I should do this year. I was asked to blog for the new and improved www.rovingrabbis.com, but it seems to me that this year it'll be missing a lot of spice, seeing as the end result will be heavily edited. Additionally, I do have a readership for this blog, and it seems silly to abandon this platform for another.
I mentioned the editing, eh? The bigwigs over at Merkos have one major concern-they don't want anything negative appearing about Merkos Shlichus or the Shluchim in a public manner. Now I fully understand this problem; after all, I've done much the same thing over this past year. Nevertheless, I do feel that what I would write for the official Merkos Shlichus would probably have my unique personality and style edited out, and I'd just become one of the many Bochurim on Merkos Shlichus.

Having said all this, I am happy to report that the first couple days here in Connecticut have gone very well. Yossi Beenstock and I spent most of our time visiting old-age homes, which was actually pretty cool. Most of the people were happy to see us, even if we only stayed for a few minutes. We must have visited twelve or thirteen of these homes, which was A. tiring, and B. enlightening.
Sometimes it's difficult to think of things to say; after all, many of these people are in their eighties and nineties. At other times, the conversation flows, and you really feel like you're connecting. Another nice thing is that whenever we left a home, the other seniors gathered around the one we had met and wanted to know who we were and why we had come. I guess that most of these people simply don't get visited very often.
By one of the places we encountered a woman who wasn't particularly interested in the Dvar Torah I was saying. Mind you, it wasn't anything deep, just a cute and positive thingie about today, the 17th of Tammuz. Anyway, as I was wrapping up with her, a woman wheeled herself over and asked if she could listen in. I told her that of course she could, and was she Jewish? She answered me, in Yiddish, "Ich bin a Shiksa with a Yiddishe Hartz", "I'm a non-Jewish woman with a Jewish heart." Then she asked us how we would know when the messiah had arrived. I told her that I wasn't exactly sure what was going to happen, but there was one criterion which he would definitely fulfill. When he comes, the whole world is going to know about it. She then started telling us all about JC, and how she thought that the whole world knows about him, so he must be the messiah. She even mentioned Isaiah 53, though she didn't expound. For a moment there I thought that all the hours of listening to J. Immanuel Shochet would come to use, but I guess it was not to be. Anyway, I responded to her assertion that the whole world knew of JC, "But think about it. There's a billion Chinese people out there, and they're not Christian. There's a billion Indians out there, and they're not Christian. There's a billion Muslims out there, and they're not Christian. How can you say that the whole world has recognized the Messiah when it's obvious that it hasn't?" She then told me that first he would be revealed to only a small group, and then later to the whole world. I said, "Well, that's not what the Jewish tradition holds. I'll know him when I see him. So far, no luck."
We parted on amicable terms; I agreed to believe what I believe, and she agreed to believe what she believes. Still, it was nice to be at the receiving end of Mivtzoyim for a change.