Isaiah 60:6-A multitude of camels will cover
you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; All those from Sheba will come; They will bring gold and frankincense, and will
bear good news of the praises of the Lord.
In '73 I had moved from a ministry house in my hometown,
where my roommates showered me with clothing because I had very little, to a sister ministry house that was connected
to my foster parent's church which was in another town.
The houses were filled with exhippies during the 'Hippie
Revival' which is now called the 'Charismatic Renewal'(technically the Hippie Revival came first-60's-70's and the Charismatic/Catholic
(Revival) Renewal came in the 70's).
I had my own room, with hardly anything in it, because
all I brought from my mother's house could fit in 2 cardboard boxes.
The Beginning of My Ministry and Continual Blessing
One day, when I came home from my job, I walked into a
room that no longer appeared to be mine. I found a bed with a pretty bedspread over a pretty pink blanket, a pretty coordinating rug
on the floor, a green padded bench at the foot of the bed and a dish garden on the dresser.
My housemates told me that a sister had visited and decided
that my room was too barren and decided to furnish my room.
The giver of the dish garden is still a mystry to this
day, and I still have one of the plants.
I would come home often from work, to find items in my
room which were always given anonymously and I usually didn't need them. I asked God what to do with them.
He told me to hang onto them until He brought their owner
to me. Which He did either the next day, a few months or years down the line. Then I would pass the item on to them.
Receiving Can be Giving
I had a roommate who was constantly angry with me
because others were always giving to me or helping me, without my asking and often before I knew that I needed.
She didn't understand that I wasn't making them do anything.
I was just trying, to the best of my ability, to do what God was telling me to do, and that included being blessed by others.
Sometimes I learned that the BIGGEST gift that I could
give was in receiving what was being offered to me.
My Ministry Becomes Our Ministry
My husband and I were married in 1980. We had so much
help.
My unofficial fosterfather married us in the backyard of
the ministry I was living in. My unofficial fostersiblings were in the wedding or sang in it. Two friends did the photography
as gifts. My unofficial fostermother got the pattern for my dress, the hats for my attendants, the basket for my flower girl
and did the reception. Wedding guests also gave us money in the wedding, enough to reimburse everything that we
had put out for the wedding AND the honeymoon, which included rental car, motel room for 2 weeks and plane tickets back to
my husband's home state.
These were mainly, simple people in a small country town
with not a whole lot of money or resources, and neither did we have much. And yet, there was an abundance of blessing to get
the job done.
My husband and I moved back to my unofficial fosterparents'
church, six months later.
We left our condo with his parents to rent with option
to sell. Two years later, it sold on a five year note with a balloon payment due in the fifth year. We used the money to finance
my quitting my job and going back to school in the new town we had since moved to the year before. Later, I got pregnant with our son, had to drop out of school and had him in '87.
Unusual Circumstances and a Major Move
In 1987, we got the balloon payment, the entire amount
without the remaining mortgage having been removed first.
No matter how many times we called the title company about
the mistake, they wouldn't admit to it and said that they had done what they were supposed to have done.
We told them exactly what we were going to do with the
money, which was paying off bills, getting essential needs and moving across country to our present home state, 6 months
after our son's birth.
We arrived here, 9 days after leaving Southern California with
nowhere to live and no job prospects. My unofficial fosterparents, who had moved here 5 years earlier, hooked us up with
a Christian realtor.
We told her that we wanted a home with a low down
payment, low monthly payments, low mortgage and owner financed, since we had limited resources and a recent car repossession
on our record.
While we were talking to her and filling out the paperwork,
our house came over the MLS listing, not yet publicly listed.
We knew as soon as we drove into the driveway that it was
ours. Ten days after we had arrived, we were moving into our new home.
The manager of the place where we had stored our things
gave my husband his first job in a convenience store where the he worked.
Right after we had made a binding agreement to buy the
house, we got calls from my husband's family telling us to give the money back.
The title company had finally come to their senses and
realised the mistake they had made. But we couldn't unspend the money. It was gone.
My husband's parents said that they would take out a loan
to pay the mortgage. We couldn't do anything at the time, but planned to pay them back when we could finally afford it.
An Unexpected Event
Years later, We found out 2 very interesting things; first
we had the opportunity to speak to our realtor and found out that our property was a miracle, and that it was the only one,
in all the years that she had worked in the business, that came with the specific requirements and price tag that we had required.
We got a lot more land for a lot less cost and requirements
than usually expected. What we asked for just wasn't possible in the natural realm.
Around the same time we asked my husband's parents
about paying back the loan on the mortgage, and found that they had never taken out a loan and had never paid on the mortgage,
and the title company in question had gone through bankruptcy and had never come after any of us for the money. That was around
1997.
Unexpected Blessings
When we bought this property, it had a '68 mobilehome on
it with additions. The owner put a lien on the mobilehome, not allowing us to remove it until we had paid the 12 year mortgage
off.
In '97, the elder over us in the church we were working
in, got the church to pay for some repairs for our mobilehome. Most of the repairs he did himself, so they were excellent.
However, the roof repairs were done by another elder who
had a problem with us. Instead of walking along the edges of the roof, he, 280 pounds, walked down the middle of the roof
and broke ever single roof beam and never apologised.
We had to saw off the corners of some doors to open or
shut them since the roof was caved in up to 10 inches in some places.
Up to this point, we had been discussing doing a roofover
on the house and some other repairs, after the mortgage was paid off, instead of replacing it. But after this we realised
that God wanted us to replace the mobilehome.
A Miracle Qualification
Then strangers started telling us that God was replacing
our home with a house and not a mobilehome.
We paid the mortgage off in '99. Then we spent a year or
so enjoying a home with no mortgage. But then, in 2000, the three year drought ended and the rains poured down in buckets
and our son and I were spending our days dumping 5 gallon buckets all day long.
The floors were separating from the walls and the water
was pouring through the ceilings in the kitchen and parts of our bedroom.
We applied for a mobilehome, but didn't qualify. People
were telling us HOUSE, not MOBILEHOME.
Then God told us that we would know when it was His will
when we literally saw people walking into our new home with their arms piled high with blessings for our house.
We applied for a house to be built on our property, fall
2000. I really sweated this one because I knew it meant that we would have another mortgage and the land that we had paid
off would become the collateral for the new house.
We qualified. We prepared the property for the new house.
The Promise and the Fulfillment of Blessings
During this time, my husband saw 2 cows standing in the
middle of the yard where the house was going to be built, and we knew that God was going to bless us in our new home.
Then we waited...and we waited...and we waited....and dumped
and dumped and dumped buckets of water.
They broke ground on our house, March 2002 and finished
in June 2002. During July, others, literally walked into our new home with their arms piled high with furniture and other
things for our home; rugs, bookshelves, hundreds of dollars in shelving units, a dining room set, filing cabinets, a stove,
ceramic tile, household linens, etc. We were completely moved in by August 8.
Please understand, I'm not recommending the route we took,
except that when we truely and sincerely follow what God tells us to do, He WILL provide for us through whatever
circumstances that may come our way.
He will take care of every need, maybe not the way that
we would like for Him to, or would expect, but in the way of His choosing and in the way of thorough provision as He designates.
And we will always be taken care of if we trust Him.
