The Gift of 40 Bibles

Okay, so you know those amazing stories you hear of God's provision over churches and missions abroad. Well...I think today I got to witness and become a part of God's plan for a small Costa Rican church.
According to Costa Rican etiquette, it is respectful to present gifts to any family you will be staying with for an extended period of time. Seeing as my host father said specifically (in the previous email) not to bring gifts, yet I still had a desire to bring something to bless him, I was stumped. My Mom prayed about it and came up with the idea of gifting several bibles to him and the church he pastors. I thought this was a great idea! So, this morning, I stopped into our local christian bookstore to pick out a few Spanish bibles. With my criteria for size and language, it was quite slim pickings. My Mom decided to go to the counter and ask if they had any additional copies in the back... She returned asking if I wanted 40 for free!!! Apparently, as a business, the store had been raising support for a missions trip that would be traveling and taking bibles abroad. However, because the donations were so generous they ended up with way "too many" bibles.
The woman informed us that she was delighted to give them to us and that just this morning she had been praying about God's plan and purpose for the extra copies. At that moment I was, yet again, awe-struck and left marveling at God's hand over this whole experience.
Check it out!
And, as if that's not cool enough, I was then confronted by a man checking out who said he would take any of the bibles I did not care to take with me. It turns out he is the pastor of a local Spanish church! The clerk exclaimed, "No, don't take hers, do you want boxes?" She had not one extra box of 40, but more than 150 bibles to give away! This man purchased one piece of literature at the register and walked out of the store with 81 books.
Wow.

Awe-struck (again),
Hannah

3 comments:

Post a Comment