We Serve an Awesome God

What do you do when your car won't start at 8:30 at night, and you find yourself stranded in a town where the only people you know are the Walgreens clerk and your daughter's violin teacher?  Well, as my kids found out on Tuesday -- You Pray.  Pray that someone with jumper cables comes and can start your car for you.  When that doesn't work, you pray that you can find a place to sleep for a decent amount.  Well, God answered our prayers.  We rejoice that our car decided to not start in the parking lot of Hastings College.  This was a blessing, because at 8:30 at night we were able to call campus security to come give us a jump start.  The battery of our van was not interested in a jump start, so we asked them if they happened to have an empty dorm room we could sleep in for the night so we could get our car towed in the morning. 

The security guard went and talked to who I assume was the dorm mother of the dorm adjacent to the parking lot.  They had an empty room on the same floor as the women's bathroom.  I state this because we ended up spending the night in the men's dormatory, so it was a HUGE blessing to be so close to the women's bathroom with two little girls.  The dorm mom even had some extra bedding. 

Isn't God amazing!  Yes, my preference would have been for the car to have started as soon as we finished violin lessons, but that was not God's plan.  My preference would have been that the security guards could jump start our van, but that was not God's plan.  God's plan was for us to spend the night in a college dorm room with all of our kids and enjoy an evening of reading fairy tales, as well as telling Bible Stories, and sharing small beds with multiple children.  The kids enjoyed this adventure -- You should have heard them talking with the man who came with an extra vehicle to drive us to the service station (J.A. rode with the tow truck and we squeezed seven people into a six passenger vehicle). 

While I didn't plan for us to spend the night away from our home, I am thankful for a quiet evening away from technology (we even limited the use of our phones so the batteries wouldn't die) to play with our kids.  Hopefully they remember this night as having been God's plan for us and I pray we passed the test of teaching our kids to turn to God when trials come and not becoming anxious.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11