God and a toddler

Week of March 16, 2014

 

My husband and I had been attending the Church of the Way in Van Nuys California for some time.

 

This particular Sunday was baby dedication day but our 15 month old stayed in the nursery because we had had her dedicated earlier. Following the brief ceremony the parents returned their babies to the nursery.

 

Looking back, we think that was when a door must have been left open and our little Andrea slipped out of the nursery unnoticed. She apparently made her way outside to the sidewalk and walked between two parked cars and was about to enter busy Van Nuys Boulevard when a man picked her up and brought her into the church foyer.

 

He presented her to an elder saying simply he found this little girl getting ready to cross Van Nuys Blvd. The elder recognized Andrea and sent someone into the church to get me.

 

When I saw Andrea she was lying quietly in the arms of the elder. It wasn’t until she saw me that she began to scream and cry.

 

Together, the three of us went back to the nursery. Everyone there was upset that Andrea had gotten out and relieved that she was safe.

The man that had brought her in was gone and the elder said he hadn’t seen him before. The odd thing was that Andrea didn’t go to men, not even to her father. Her tendency would be to run from a man especially a stranger. But the elder said she looked very peaceful in the man’s arm and she didn’t fuss when he took her from him and cradled her.

 

Some may call this luck but after people had calmed down the sentiment at the nursery was that someone was looking out for Andrea and sent an angel to rescue my little girl. I would not argue otherwise.

 

Barbara Koukl

Van Nuys, California

Out of Gas

Week of March 9,2014

 

I had gone to the mall for a job interview. I spotted a man pushing a broom when I entered and I figured he must know where the main office is.  He was very pleasant and appeared to know a lot about this mall.

 

During my interview for a management position I mentioned the nice man I encountered pushing the broom. Guess I thought I would put in a good word for him since he showed kindness to me. After I described him they smiled and said, “Oh that’s Jeff, he owns this mall. That is one of the ways he gets to talk with the customers.” I was hired as a manager of that mall.

 

After that Jeff and I kept bumping in to each other. He was always cordial and we would have friendly albeit brief conversations. Several months went by and then I learned that Jeff had sold this mall for something around $29,000,000. Shortly after this the new owners gave me an envelope to deliver to Jeff’s home.

 

I wasn’t surprised to find that his home was a mansion right on the water but I was surprised when I pressed the front door bell and it was Jeff who opened the door. He greeted me warmly and invited me into his home. He opened the envelope and told me that it was a sizeable check representing his part of the commission of the sale of the mall. He or someone in his family was a licensed real estate broker. Then he shared with me that his family foundation was inundated by requests for money. He said he was really looking “to find something to give to that is making a difference, let me know.”

A couple of years went by and I was going down a back road near the coast when I see a guy standing by his car on the side of the road. It is Jeff. He has run out of gas and I offer to take him to the nearest filling station. It turns out to be some distance before we reach a station. We chat. I ask him if he is still looking for an organization to give to that is making a difference. He asks what I have in mind. I tell him about a new organization called Gifts From God, which is feeding the hungry and helping families needing furniture or providing a car free to struggling single moms. By the time we are back to his car with a can of gasoline he has agreed to meet with Mike Butterfield, the president of Gifts from God. From that meeting came a much needed seed grant from Jeff’s family foundation.

 

A year later I am driving on Laurel Road in Venice and I am rounding a curve and there is Jeff standing by his car on the side of the road. Yep, out of gas again.  “You have come to my rescue again, it must be time for another grant to Gifts From God,” he grins. It was.

 Who else, but God ,could orchestrate such timely chance meetings like this?

 

Lloyd Keith

Osprey,Fl.

Family Mystery

 

Week of March 2, 2014

 

It is one of those unexplained things in our family. Grandfather had come from his house on the Rhode Island shore to spend the better part of the week helping  dad replace the front porch on our home in the city.. On the second day my grandfather announced he had to go home. My dad protested but ‘Papa’ was firm.

 

Papa didn’t know why, he just knew he had to get back to his wife, who was blind, and their adult daughter. My father reluctantly drove Papa to the bus station.

 

The next afternoon I stood on the unfinished porch with my dad watching the rain and wind blow by the house. At five and a half years old  I was holding onto the porch railing and my dad was holding onto me. Suddenly, without making a sound, a tree in the lot across the street toppled over. It didn’t snap or crack it just blew over and was uprooted. Then another tree fell. My dad had seen enough and took me inside.

 

Dad gathered our family on the inside wall of the dining room, away from the windows while he stood in the opposite corner by the telephone. He called the fire department to discuss the large elm next to our house. While he was talking, we heard a thump and saw the massive tree fall past the window. A branch grazed the house but the main part of the tree fell harmlessly into our driveway.

 

We didn’t know it then but we were witnessing the destructive hurricane of 1938 that would claim 682 lives from Long Island, Providence and the Southern New England coastline. There was no radar in those days and there had been no  warning of the approaching danger.

 

For two days after the hurricane my dad tried to reach Papa the phone lines were down. Finally, on the third day my dad decided to drive. He told us later he didn’t realize how catastrophic this hurricane had been until he approached the ocean. Where there had been a row of homes there was now empty space. The road was obliterated in places by sand and he had to detour around large boats and wharfs left stranded in the middle of the roadway.  

 

He finally arrived in Tiverton only to find that the  Old Stone Bridge to Island Park was gone. He hitched a ride over by boat.

 

When he reached the island he found everything in shambles. Many of the buildings he was familiar with were gone or reduced to rubble and my dad was disoriented and in shock. There was so much devastation. A metal street sign still in place told him he was at Papa’s road. All the cottages on the street were crushed or gone, except one. There was Papa’s house still standing with minimal damage.

 

Papa said when he awoke the morning of the storm he saw the ominous clouds, and boarded up his house, including the cellar windows preventing water from flooding the house. Papa, grandma and my aunt rode out the ferocious storm in that single story house that Papa had built himself.

 

What had produced that overwhelming urge for my grandfather to return home? He never tried to explain it. When asked how he knew he had to return home he would just shrug his shoulders.

 

 “Something was telling me I had to go home,” was all that he would say.  He just heeded the message. And it is well he did.  Like my Papa, today I pay attention to any strong inner messages. I know the source.

 

“Whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure without fear of evil.” (Proverbs 1:33)

 

Jody Estes

East Providence, Rhode Island 

A Godly Confirmation

 Week of February 23

          Like most empty-nesters, we had two cars:  A luxury sedan for Bill and a sporty SUV for me.  When Bill was diagnosed with brain cancer and had to be driven to chemo treatments, he became the passenger in the sedan…the smooth leather seats made it easy for him to pivot while getting in and out.  The cloth seats in my vehicle didn’t quite do the trick.  He just plain enjoyed being in that car!

            As Bill’s condition worsened, we realized that we no longer needed two cars, so our youngest son was given my little car.  When Bill entered hospice care at home, I drove the sedan on the days I was able to go to the office for part of the day and for all the errands.

            After Bill died, I tried hard to like his car as much as I had my “old” one.  It was a lovely automobile, and as much as I appreciated its features, it just didn’t please me.  Another son with two children needed to replace a troublesome car, so I knew I could pass the sedan along to him and keep it in the family.  And that Bill would be pleased to have some grandchildren riding in it!

            So a trip to the dealer produced a sporty little red sedan that won my heart right away.  No trade, not much paperwork, and the car would be ready for pickup the following day.  That night, of course, doubt came to visit.  Had I been callous to Bill’s memory not to cherish his car?  Was it my duty to keep it spiffy and on the road for as long as it would last?   I decided to go ahead and claim the new car.

            When I saw it sitting on the lot, all shiny and cute and waiting for me, I knew I’d been guided to the purchase and that all was well.  How did I know?  The numbers on MY (not Bill’s) car’s license plate had been 5603.  The brand new plates, supplied by the dealer, ended in 5604.  A most logical progression that my engineer husband would certainly have appreciated!

                                                                       

Rosemarie Seewagon

Hilton, New York

An unusual job reference

 

Week of February 16, 2014

 

Approximately twenty years ago I was working as a secretary in a steamship company in New Orleans. I had been there a couple of years but because I had studied to be a legal secretary, I was ready to get a job with a law firm. I started to seek God’s guidance to help me find a job where I could utilize my legal training. During lunch hour, I would take my Bible and head behind the office building where there were benches and fountains.

 

While I was out there I would often see homeless people and panhandlers. There was one man in particular that was there every day. Eventually, he came to me and asked what I was reading and I told him. He asked if I was a Jesus freak and I said yes I am. He said I made him feel uncomfortable when he was trying to ask people for money. I told him I had no condemnation for him, but that I thought he seemed able bodied enough to work. I also shared my desire to get a job with a law firm.

 

We became speaking friends and one day he said, “Since you know God so well, why don’t you pray that I get a job.” At that moment I put my hand on his shoulder and started praying out loud. “Not here, not now,” he protested. I just kept praying. That was on a

Thursday. On Monday he came running up to me at lunch. He was clean and groomed and I hardly recognized him. An attorney who he had been asking for money had hired him. I was happy for him but I was jealous. I said (silently of course) God, I am the one who wanted a job with a law firm, have you mixed things up here or what? I was sure God knew what he was doing and I thanked him for giving this man a job.

 

About a week later, the man came to me and said, “I have an interview for you at the law firm. The senior partner needs a secretary.” I thought this would take an act of faith for me to go on an interview at the recommendation of this man. Were they just humoring him? Those thoughts vanished immediately because I knew no matter what; I would do nothing to cause him to waiver in his belief in answered prayers. I was not going to let pride prevent me from going and thereby show a lack of faith.

 

I thanked God for the opportunity, went on the interview and I was hired on the spot. The attorneys still tell people that the best employment recommendation they ever had was from a homeless man. I quickly remind them that God alone was the employment agency. God will answer your prayer when you step out in faith. God also has a wonderful sense of humor.

 

Carolyn Bourgeois

New Orleans, Louisiana

Chance Meetings?

Week of February 9,2014

 

The beginning of a year is a good time to look ahead and to make some changes. In my case I decided that twelve years working in the same piano store in Poughkeepsie, New York was long enough.

 

I had gone about as far as I could go working in this family-owned store. Besides, twelve years of upstate New York winters was enough. It was time to move to Florida. When I informed Jon Vincitore, the owner of the store, he urged me to stay one more year. I agreed to stay until the fall.

 

In the spring I attended a national conference and met the owners of a piano store in Sarasota, Florida. They invited me down to Florida for an interview. I told a regular customer and former employee of the Poughkeepsie store, John DelVecchio that I was going to Sarasota.

 

“Maybe you’ll bump into my cousin, Ray White. He can play the drum, guitar and he can sing. You’ll like him. He is doing construction right now somewhere in the Sarasota/Bradenton/Venice area.”

 

“Do you have a number I can call or an address?” He had neither.

 

 

In July I flew to Sarasota for my interview with the principles of O’Lynn Callahan Piano and Organ at the Corner of Bee Ridge and Tamiami Trail. The interview went well and I followed them to look at their new store in Venice, a twenty minute drive south.

 

Before the morning was over we agreed I would manage their Venice store in the fall.

 

On the way back up Route 41 I was driving through Osprey when I saw a sign “Condo for Rent.” I stopped and within an hour I had made a deposit on it. I now had a job and a place to stay when I returned. I had accomplished in a half day what I thought would take me several days. Now it was time to look around.

 

I drove into Sarasota Square Mall. Walking through that mall I ran across a piano/organ store with several young men taking turns playing an organ set up in front of the store. As I lingered to watch, a little guy walked up to me and asked, “Can I help you?”

 

“Oh,” I said, “I’m just looking around. I just flew down from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for an interview,”

 

“Poughkeepsie Huh? Do you happen to know John DelVecchio?” he asked.

 

“RAY? RAY WHITE?”  I don’t know who was more surprised, Ray or me. Turns out he had left construction recently and this was his second day at this store. While neither of us was particularly religious at that point we both agreed our meeting this way, “Must be a God thing.” I still get goose bumps  when I recall that moment.

 

Before moving to Florida I set out to say goodbye to family and special friends living in New York and New England. However, saying goodbye to Uncle Dennis was going to be a challenge.

 

No one knew exactly where he was living; somewhere in the Berkshires was what I was told.

 

One day while driving the Mass Pike to return to Poughkeepsie I intentionally pulled off at the Lee/ Barrington exit for the Berkshires to see if I could find a phone book and locate Uncle Dennis. Besides I was hungry and wanted something to eat. Coming off the exit there is a town to the left and one to the right. It didn’t seem to matter which way I went but something made me feel I should go right. I drove past several fast food drive-ins that I normally would have driven into and continued down Main Street to the end of the business district. There at the end was a diner with a single parking space open right in front.

 

As I walked up the steps to the entrance I saw there was one man sitting at the counter. The back of his head looked familiar. Could it be? It was him! I slipped in and sat beside the man at the counter and said casually, “Hello Dennis.”

He told me he lived in the town to the left of the exit but he often came to this diner. He especially liked the pies here. If I had tried to look him up in the phonebook I would not have found him. He didn’t have a phone. I had a nice visit with Dennis that day and actually returned two weeks later to his home where I presented him with a guitar that I knew he wanted.

 

Ray White and I became partners in a band and played together for several years in Florida. We also both became Christians and Ray is a worship pastor at a church and goes on frequent missions trips to Africa.

 

I play regularly at worship services for a church and I have my own company Worship Media Solutions helping churches with their sound and video needs.

 

As busy as I am, I try to stay attentive to any unexplained prodding or feelings. For example, the other day I left my house to get a haircut when I felt a strong urge to stop at the Living Word Book Store and see Jesse Ramos. So I drove out of my way to the bookstore. In the parking lot I passed a woman walking to her car. I felt I should speak to her but I didn’t know what to say and being basically shy I walked by as she stopped and opened the trunk of a car. As I walked into the store there was Jesse at the counter holding my calling card in his hand and waving his arm at me.

 

“Hey Rick, what timing. There was a gal in here whose church needs your services. She just left.”

 

“She’s there putting something in her trunk,” I said.  He looked out the store window, “Yeah that’s her, how did you know?”

 

How did I know? How do I explain my bumping into Ray White out of the thousands of people who live and work in Sarasota County? What directed me to that diner in the Berkshires that afternoon I found Uncle Dennis? Why did needing to see Jesse Ramos come to my mind when I started off for a haircut?

 

Were these all chance meetings? I don’t think so, not for a minute.

 

Rick Furrow,

Formerly Poughkeepsie, N.Y. via Florida

To Prescott, Arizona

God's Quartet

Week of February 1, 2014

 

 

We were on our way back to Fayetteville NC from Augusta, Georgia where we sang to about 700 people in the First Baptist Church when our old bus broke down along I-95 somewhere in South Carolina. Our piano player Earl Britt said,” the only thing I know to do is to start praying.”

 

We are on our knees when there is a knock on the side of the bus. Here is an elderly gentleman with a straw hat, white shirt and bib overalls and a sports jacket. He says you boys a quartet?  Now we’ve got  letters on the side of the bus that are three feet high that say Masters Quartet. I chuckled and said Yes Sir.  He says would you boys be able to sing tonight?  I was just getting ready to tell him no, when my younger brother Tommy jerked me out of the way and says. “Yes sir we will but we can’t go, our bus broke down.”

 

He says, “That’s no problem, I can be back in about 15 minutes with some trucks to take you and your equipment to my house. In about twenty minutes he came back with two Ford Stake trucks. a station wagon and a wrecker.I told the wrecker driver that we didn’t have any money and to leave the bus be.

We all pile in the trucks and station wagon and go to the preacher’s house which is out n the country about 30 miles from the interstate. When we arrive his wife has dinner ready for us. The food was set up on two long tables. We finish eating and watch a little TV.

 

What we didn’t know was that this preacher, his wife and two children all had separate telephone lines and were calling people and telling them to be at the church at 6:30.

 

We learn that Pastor Reed had been a preacher for an Assembly of God church in Indiana. When his parents died he had come to South Carolina to live on their farm. When the pastor of the local Presbyterian church died he was asked if he would fill in. He’s been filling in for several years now. 

 

When we get to this old wooden church in the middle of a tobacco field it is packed. After singing about five songs the preacher tells us to go back to where the refreshments are as he is going to take up a love offering for us. After what happened at the Baptist church I’m kind of leery and I stand by the door.

 

When the ushers come forward with the plates he looks over the podium and says ,“that ain’t goner work…these boys sang at a big Baptist church in Augusta and they got $50…that ain’t  happenin here. Now I’m gonna send these ushers back out and when they come back if these plates aren’t full I’m  gonna tell what I know and who I know it on.” 

 

They finish the collection and call us back out and we sing a little more and the last song we did was Sinner Saved by Grace. We use that at our altar call.

 

As the preacher is praying this little blonde haired girl comes running down the aisle to ask God to save her. She had run away from home and had been gone for some time and had returned home and asked her mommy and daddy to forgive her and they said if God has forgiven you we will. And that is why she was running to the altar to ask God to forgive her and become her Savior.

 

After all was said and done our piano player says to me, “Is that our bus I hear running outside?”  I look out the door and there is the wrecker driver standing by our bus in greasy overalls with his hat in his hand.

I say, “you fixed it.” He says, “Yep.”

“ How much do we owe you?” “You owe us nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

He says, “that little girl who just went to the altar is my daughter. She wouldn’t have come if y’all hadn’t been here tonight.”

 

I asked him what was wrong with our bus and he says all the bolts on the fly wheel had fallen out and were laying in the dust pan.

 

“ Wait a minute. I’m mechanic enough to know that bolts don’t fall out of a flywheel, especially on a bus. They have locking caps on them and they don’t fall out, you have to drill them out.”He says,  “Every one of them was laying in the pan and not a threat on anyone of them was torn off.  God backed the bolts out of that flywheel so you would be here so my daughter would hear the singing and your testimony that you brought here tonight.”

 

As we drove home I opened the envelope containing our love offering.  We counted out coins and small bills totaling $ 1200.           .

 

About four months later we got a phone call from Preacher Reed who said they were trying to raise money to build a new church. He wanted a gospel sing and would we help. We got three and four other groups we knew and we drove to South Carolina to sing in the middle of a football field standing on a flatbed trailer. That night  they raised over $100,000.

They built the church and invited us back to sing at their first service . When we pulled up in front of the church there was a big piece of marble block on the Northeast corner of the building. Inscribed on that block was Masters Quartet and they listed all ten names in our group, the four singers, the five musicians, and our bus driver.

We kept in touch over the years and we went back and sang at Preacher Reed’s funeral. He  had filled in for 15 years.

 

Lee Bissette

Fayetteville, North Carolina