Annis Lindkvist befriended Jimmy Fraser after asking him for directions while he was begging in Edinburgh

A homeless man from Edinburgh has described the “incredible act of kindness” of a tourist who invited him to spend Christmas at her family home in Sweden.

Jimmy Fraser was begging on George Street in the city centre when Annis Lindkvist and her sister Emma, from Sagmyra in central Sweden, asked him for directions.

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They struck up a friendship and swapped numbers at the end of the trip, staying in touch by text before Lindkvist offered to pay for his flights so he could spend a week with her family over the festive period.

Fraser, who became homeless following his divorce 13 years ago, said: “It’s weird, I know. I was begging on George Street and these two women came up to me and the next thing I knew I was in Sweden. People promise you things all the time on the street but they never materialise.

“But I thought I’m going to go for it as its once in a lifetime. I couldn’t believe it anyway at first. People tell you ‘see you tomorrow, I’ll get you a drink’ and then nothing happens. But this did happen, actually, so it was really weird.”

The 54-year-old former security guard, who went to an ice hockey match, Christmas markets and midnight mass with his host’s family and friends, told the BBC News website: “It was a beautiful experience.”

“Annis is such a wonderful, kind and generous person and I wish everyone was like her,” he said. “Being homeless is cold, lonely and depressing and you get a lot of abuse from people. This was an incredible act of kindness and I loved meeting Annis’s friends, family and colleagues. I wish I was there now.”

Lindkvist described her own doubts about issuing such an open invitation to a stranger. “We give money to charity every month but we have never done anything like this before,” she said. “There were friends and family who thought I was really crazy, but I just opened my home to him and said everything that is ours was his too.”

The 37-year-old, who works with dementia sufferers, said she had invited Fraser back to stay with the family again over the Easter break, and that he was “part of the family now”.

She said: “There is a big place in my heart for him. I had had my doubts about it, but I sat up late one night when he was here and spoke to him about it. I could have been a killer, just like he could have been, but I just had a feeling in my stomach that he was a really nice person.”

Also in Edinburgh, the homeless charity founder Josh Littlejohn has been awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list. Littlejohn set up Social Bite, a chain of sandwich shops across Scotland that train and employ homeless staff. He recently announced plans to build a row of low-cost, eco-friendly homes to help end the vicious cycle of homelessness in the capital.

About 20 residents will stay in the supervised village environment – with access to counselling, addiction therapy and budgeting advice – for up to a year before moving on to more permanent accommodation.

According to Shelter Scotland, 3,431 homelessness assessments were made in Edinburgh in the last year, while it warned that over 5,000 children across the country would be living in temporary accommodation on Christmas Day.