What a special night tonight has been. It started with catching a quick dinner with my lovely wife. That alone is reason to love any evening. But this one became even more special when our waitress recognized that I was the pastor at the E-Free Church. After we finished our dinner she knelt down by our table and asked if she could "burden" us with something for us to pray about for her. She told us about her mother who is dying with cancer. She told us how her husband had left her earlier this year. She told us how she had lost her main job recently and now only had her part-time waitress salary to make ends meet. We were able to encourage her, assure her of our prayers, and invite her to be part of our church.
When it came time to leave the tip I reached into my pocket where I remembered I had put some money that I had found earlier that day and was unable to locate its owner. I suddenly knew why God had allowed me to find that money that very day. He had indeed set up a Divine Appointment for us. In fact, the restaurant we were at was not our first choice that evening. We actually had first gone to a different restaurant but they were out of soup and that is what we were craving so we went to this restaurant instead where we had this specific lady as a waitress. What a thrill it was for me to leave her a 200% tip that I believe God had orchestrated for her to have.
From there we went back to the church where we had a meeting with our church leadership to present the concepts for an upcoming facility expansion as we look to more than double our current nursery area. Our church is literally exploding in growth (this October we are up 40% from last October) and the majority of that growth is young families. Along with adding 2400 square feet to our nursery, this expansion will also allow us to add 2400 square feet to our lower level as well, giving us our largest classroom in our facility. Our goal is to raise $100,000 in seed money for this expansions in our annual Ingathering Offering this coming November 24. A letter along with a special giving envelope will be going out to our church family next week explaining all of this.
When we were finished with the meeting tonight there was a real buzz in the room. Our leadership is excited about taking steps of faith and watching what God does! I love meetings like this. I love being part of a church that is moving forward in meeting as many people as possible right where they are and helping to move them to where God wants them to be.
And if all of that wasn't exciting enough, I was able to drive home in the snow! I love winter in northern Michigan. There are few things I love more than watching it snow. It was the "white" icing on the cake for a perfect evening!
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