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most part I paid for them.”
    Those eyeglasses slipped down on her nose, and she peered at me over the top of them. “We can’t do that here. We cannot spend our own funds to finance Priscilla Home.”
    â€œWhy not? I can’t ask the Lord to give us groceries when I have the money in my pocketbook to pay for them.”
    â€œThat will not work here. There are always many needs at Priscilla Home, and you could spend every penny of your income and still not meet all the obligations.”
    She was so matter-of-fact, so sure of herself, I could see how easy we might lock horns. Ursula was a stringy woman and didn’t fit in that big office chair. She tried leaning back in it but that didn’t help. Then she started fooling with a paper clip, bending it out of shape. “WhenI first came here as director, my father instructed me meticulously about how to bring Priscilla Home up to professional standard.”
    At her age, is her daddy still running her life? I wondered.
    â€œMy father is a learned man, and I respect his judgment,” she was saying. “Fund-raising is the board’s responsibility, he said, and he forbade me spending my money on needs here. That would lead to my financial ruin.”
    â€œIs the board doing the fund-raising?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” she said, a bit put off by my asking. “It hasn’t worked out that way.” Leaning forward, shuffling a stack of papers, she appeared to be looking for something. “Here, this is what I’m looking for,” she said as she handed me a Priscilla Home prayer letter. As I was reading it, she informed me, “This is a faith ministry. We depend on donations from our constituency and from grants given by foundations. That letter you have in your hand was mailed to our contributors two weeks ago. We should soon begin receiving contributions in the mail.”
    It was a prayer letter, all right—like so many of those letters I would get and have to throw in the trash because it took all I had to support my own church. “You send out letters?”
    â€œYes, we send out letters. That informs the public of our financial needs—”
    â€œAnd you ask foundations for charity?”
    â€œYes, of course.” She looked provoked. “That’s the way all nonprofits are funded.”
    â€œNonprofits?”
    Annoyed, she threw the paper clip in the wastebasket and started toying with another one. “Yes, nonprofits like hospitals, research centers, and so forth. Any such organization can apply. I spend hours writing proposals for grants, and since I came here two years ago, we’ve received one, a grant of fifteen hundred dollars. I have eleven proposals in the mail and am in the process of writing six more.”
    The way this conversation was going made me uncomfortable. I didn’t exactly know how to say what I wanted to, but I had to say something or I knew I’d regret it later. “Ursula . . . I don’t think of Priscilla Home as just another nonprofit organization. It’s a Christian ministry. To ask for money makes it look like the Lord can’t take care of us.”
    Ursula sat bolt upright, her elbows on the desk and her fingers twisting that paper clip to beat the band. “Do you consider that my appealing to a foundation and writing letters to our constituency makes us mendicants?”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œMendicants are religious persons who live off alms. Do you consider that my appealing to foundations and sending letters to our contributors is begging?”
    â€œWhat would you call it?”
    The phone rang. She answered it and spoke briefly with somebody. As she was talking, I noticed the black circles under her eyes. No wonder , I thought, she’s probably up half the night writing them proposals to foundations .
    When she got off the line, there was an edge in hervoice. “Esmeralda, how do you propose