Although most angel stories involve the “main character” meeting a helpful stranger who later disappears, or actually seeing a glorious heavenly being, probably the majority of angel-help is anonymous. It is only later that we sometimes see how beautifully our problems have been resolved, and how the plan God had for us was perfect after all. Just ask Leslie Morris.

“Last year was a hard one for us,” Leslie says. “My grandmother passed away after a long illness, and then my husband had to have back surgery for tumors on the nerves on his spinal column. Right before his surgery, our neighbors called the police because we left the dogs out barking; so the dogs were impounded and although the charges were dropped, we had to pay fines and court costs to get the dogs back.”

Leslie had been wishing her family could move to a different neighborhood. In fact, she would often dream of a particular house, with a view on its back deck almost identical to a real house in one of their favorite vacation areas. In the dream, Leslie would also discover that there were more rooms in the house than she expected. It was all pretty pointless, however, because their own home needed a lot of work before they could put it on the market. And with Leslie’s husband recuperating, there was no telling when or if she could pursue her dream. But…there was no harm in looking.

One afternoon, Leslie and her teenage daughter went out with a real estate agent. “When the agent let us into this particular house to look around, it felt like I was home,” Leslie says. “There was a deck on the back that had the same view as the deck at our vacation spot. We looked at the main floor and the basement, thinking it was a little small---and then, just like in the dream, the agent told us that there were two more bedrooms and a full bath upstairs!” Feeling goosebumps, Leslie went upstairs. The layout was perfect, and on the counter in the bathroom was a large piece of equipment. The agent didn’t know what it was, but Leslie did. "It is a photographic enlarger,” she explained. “You use it in a darkroom when you develop pictures." Leslie’s father-in-law had had one, and her husband’s favorites memories involved his dad and him working in a darkroom together. “It was like a sign,” Leslie says. “I knew this house was meant for us.” They bought the house as quickly as they could, and soon met their nice new neighbors.

Of course Leslie’s older house had to be fixed up and sold. One day the new neighbors approached Leslie. “We have friends who need a house in your old neighborhood,” the neighbor explained. “They recently gained custody of their nephew, a little boy born with a heroin addiction. They want him to be in a good school district like that one, but the houses seem to be too expensive.”

“Ours isn’t,” Leslie said. “We have to do a lot of work on it before we can put it up for sale.”

The neighbor gasped. “Our friends are fixer-uppers!” she said. “They’d probably love an ‘as-is’ house, and the mortgage would be lower too!”

Leslie and her husband weren’t trying to make a profit off their old house, she realized; they just wanted it taken off their hands. And here was the perfect answer. Today “This family is excitedly fixing up our old house the way they want it,” Leslie says, and the nephew is attending band camp this week, right across the street from their house.”

Coincidence? Perhaps. But Leslie recognizes an angel’s hand in the next event that happened at this same time. “My teenage daughter has a friend who is a foster child, and always worried about being sent back to live with her parents, who are abusive.” Just about the time that Leslie’s family was moving into their dream house, the teenager was sent back to her parents’ custody. “She tried to make it work for a few months, but eventually she ran away again. Her mother called us, assuming that her daughter might have come to stay with my daughter.”

But she hadn’t. And Leslie was worried sick about a seventeen-year-old girl out there somewhere by herself. Through prayers, phone calls and caring people, the girl was eventually found and a custody court date scheduled. “Here’s where our angels come in again,” says Leslie. “For the first time in 27 years, due to our dream house, we have an extra bedroom. We bought her some clothes (she had none), my husband went to court with her, and suggested that she stay with us on weekends. The judge agreed, and placed the girl in a group home during the week. We would have not been able to help her if we didn’t have that extra room.”

The girl seems to be doing fine in this stable and loving environment, and Leslie’s own daughter has developed an “attitude of gratitude” as well.

“The whole thing feels like I'm putting together a jigsaw puzzle, but am only getting one piece at a time to see where it will fit and don't have the box-top to see what the finished picture looks like,” Leslie says. “I absolutely don't like surprises, so if you had told me a year ago where we would be right now, I would've told you you were crazy.”

But faith doesn’t demand that we know where we’re going, only Who we’re following. And this faithful woman is ready to go.