I posted this on the forum but thought it could be usefully posted here too…
I was going through a bit of a bad patch when I was sixteen and after an abortive attempt to move to London I had decided enough was enough and I headed for home back in Wales.
I’d counted my pennies and worked out I had just enough to pay my train fare from London to the city nearest my home town and would walk the remaining 15 kilometres. I also had to walk across London from Earls Court to Paddington to catch the train. So I set off not really knowing which was best or west 
On my way I wandered along the Embankment… clearly hopelessly lost… and I bumped into a Salvation Army officer and asked him which road was the best one to take. He asked me what I was up to… and of course I explained. Without further query he emptied his pockets of all the change he had on him and forced it on me so that I could afford to get a tube train across London and maybe a bite to eat to keep me going til I got home.
In the end I accepted it, not that it was much really, caught the train home, regrouped, reassessed, retrained and set off again a few years later and made a much better job of it.
However… that one act of unsolicited kindness has been repaid countless times. Nearly every time I pass a collector for the Salvos I throw a few coins in and say “Thanks for being there when I needed you.”.
The Eclectic Interweb 