Unbelievable Prayer Response

 Week of November 25

Bill and Cindy are a wonderful Christian couple. For years Bill has taught Latin in the Manchester Public School System. Cindy was a youth counselor when she first met Bill.  They are married, have six children.

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The Pfeiffers have a modest home for themselves and their children. Despite having a large family they opened their home to unwed pregnant girls who had nowhere to go and wanted to deliver their unborn babies. The family agreed on the need to find a separate place  and expand its reach to anyone seeking deeper spiritual meaning.

 

Bill said the whole family discussed what an ideal retreat center would look like. Each of the children had things they wanted. The younger children wanted an indoor pool to swim in year round and not have to worry about leaves or cold weather. The youngest boy wanted "a neat robot thing that cleans the pool." One teenager wanted a tennis court and another a jute box. Bill wished for a room large enough to house a small chapel and Cindy visualized a spacious kitchen suitable for volunteers to prepare meals for groups. 

 

 Bill, an ordained priest, lead the family in prayer and presented these requests to the Lord. Bill then suggested to the children that they give up something they like, to show their seriousness in making these prayer requests. After a lively discussion the children decide to give up watching television.

 

Almost a year goes  by. No television. No retreat center. “Then came God's answer,” Bill said. He receives a call from a friend who reports a local bank had foreclosed on an estate. A developer had built the mansion as his personal residence during the real estate boom of the early 1980’s.The housing bubble burst, the developer had committed suicide and the bank was left with the property. It had remained vacant for more than a year and the bank “is anxious to unload this white elephant.”

 

The Pfeiffer family went to take a look. A long secluded driveway leads into the property that includes 23 acres, mostly wooded. A large two-story house sits on a hill overlooking woods and a pond. In front of the house there is a paved area for parking and a lawn with a flagpole. Adjacent to the house is a hard surface tennis court and down the hill is a carriage house large enough to serve as a chapel.

 

The sprawling contemporary house has a rustic interior with four bedrooms, three baths, and a
spacious dining room off of a large kitchen with a commercial size stove that is suitable for cooking for groups.

 

There is an indoor pool and yes, it is equipped with a self-cleaning robot. One thing the Pfeiffers hadn't requested was a party room with a built in wet bar. However, in one corner of this room stands a shiny jute box.

 

"And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."  (Matthew 21:22)

 

Bill Pfeiffer

Hebron Connecticut

Happy Thanksgiving

November 22

 

We pack up the kids, the hot dishes and slide off to the church parish house. 

There are about fifty adults and children  at this neighborhood thanksgiving. We stand hand in hand giving thanks for all God’s bounty. We break bread and share the Lord’s Supper before our own.

We arrived as strangers but we leave filled with fellowship with others who are grateful for God’s blessings. This is a Thanksgiving  I shall long remember.

 

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
 (Psalm 95:2

Colleen's Accident

 Week of November 18

 

One morning before leaving for high school, God put it on my heart that I was going to be in a car accident that day. I told my older sister who urged me not to go to school.

 

I told her I had to go today because if I was absent or late one more day I was risking being expelled. Besides I had stayed up late finishing the hair on my Raggedy Ann Doll for my Home Economics class that had to be turned in this morning in order to get credit.

 

My friend Robin drove up in her Riviera at the usual time. While my sister kept telling me not to temp fate by going to school, I prayed over the car asking God for his protection. When I got into the car with my books and Raggedy Ann doll I noticed a St. Christopher Medal hanging from the rear view mirror. It hadn’t been there before.

 

“Who gave you the medal Robin, your mother?”

 

“My grandmother.”

 

That’s neat I thought, we can use all the protection possible, especially today. Everything went well until we entered the Natchez Highway and Robin speeded up. We hit a patch of black ice and slid off the highway and smashed onto a cement irrigation

 

box that propelled the car backwards. We flipped completely over three times before coming to a stop right side up. I passed out. I came too with Robin yelling my name.

 

I was crunched up against the mangled door and window that was shattered and bowed from the impact. Wedged between my head and the window was the Raggedy Ann Doll. The hair of the doll was caught at the top of the window and the doll acted as cushion for me preventing serious injury.

 

Robin and I crawled out of the car and ran off to the first house we could see to call our parents. When we returned to the car a state trooper was standing by our wreck. He said when he saw the damage and nobody in the car he thought our bodies had already been taken to the morgue. He told us we shouldn’t have left the scene of an accident.

 

Our parents arrived and later they drove us to school but nobody ever said anything about being late that day.

 

Colleen Jorgenson

 Veradale, Washington