Mimmo worked all day, pausing only for lunch and an occasional bottle of water.  Finally Jeannette insisted that he stop for the day.  His dinner was getting cold, and night was falling.  Mimmo ate, took a shower, and then came into the kitchen, looking concerned.  “Have you seen my wallet?” he asked Jeannette.  “Did I leave it inside the house?”

His wallet, stuffed with important papers, credit card, his driver’s license and money from a check he had cashed yesterday.  Jeannette had cleaned house, but hadn’t seen the wallet.    “I got gas for the roto tiller earlier,” Mimmo remembered.  “Maybe I left it at the gas station.”  He jumped into his car and raced to the gas station.  He returned a few moments later.  No luck.

Jeannette wondered if Mimmo had put his wallet in the back pocket of his shorts, and it had fallen out while he was working.  “I’m going outside with a flashlight to look around,”she said.  “You’ll never find anything in that big area, even with a light,” Mimmo protested.  Jeannette went out anyway.

Standing in the midst of the garden, however, she realized what a hopeless task it was.  There were piles of debris all over this extremely large plot, and Mimmo might even have covered the wallet with soil, had he not noticed it.  Jeannette turned to prayer.  “God, please show me where the wallet is,” she prayed.  “I need a sign so that Mimmo might believe in you more firmly.”

The instant that she finished, Jeannette heard an inner voice.  “It was my guardian angel,”she says.  “I have heard and felt him before, and I recognized him.”

The voice had specific advice.  “Go to the shed by the lake,” it said.  There was a tool shed far from the house on the edge of the lake, where they kept all their gardening things.  Jeannette walked towards it, still shining her flashlight on the ground.  “I didn’t say on the ground, but in the shed,”the voice came again.  Now there was no doubt.  Jeannette quickened her pace, opened the shed doors and started looking on the ground of the shed.  “Put your hand into the roto tiller,” the voice directed her once more.  Jeannette obeyed.

There, balanced on top of the blade, was Mimmo’s wallet, without a scratch on it.  Never even wondering how a wallet could have gotten on top of a tool, especially a blade that moves, Jeannette ran through the darkness and into the house, thanking God for this gift.  “Mimmo couldn’t believe what he saw,”she says.  “Since then he has become less doubtful, and when things come into our lives that we have no control over, he also turns to the Lord in prayer.”

People who believe they have heard an angel’s voice say that in most cases, the directions are clear and concise, compelling one to believe and do, without question.  How wonderful that we can bring even our smallest problems to the heavenly host, and to the God who gave them to us.

-

Here’s something nice, in Portuguese.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=F0M2MJNU

And here’s an Oldie but Goodie.  Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas:

Members of the Gospel Lighthouse Church in Blytheville, Arkansas were preparing to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the needy in their area.  “Fifteen or twenty families had brought our own turkey and trimmings to the church to share, and had made extra food,” explains Jeanne Templeton.  Word had spread, and the volunteers expected a crowd.  Would there be enough to go around?

About eleven, church members took their places in the food line, and someone opened the kitchen door.  People streamed in, each taking a plate and passing it along, cafeteria-style.  So many guests!  Jeanne sliced turkey, scooped mashed potatoes—and sent a silent prayer heavenward.  Lord, let the food last.

Time passed, but the needy kept arriving.  Odd, Jeanne mused.  They weren’t running out of anything.  Even the pans of dressing, which had been few in number when dinner began, still seemed full.  She caught the eye of a perplexed friend spooning vegetables from a seemingly bottomless bowl.  What was going on?

Finally, the last guest accepted a brimming plate.  Jeanne looked at her watch.  Four o’clock!  It couldn’t be!  And there was still food remaining.  Baffled, the women packed the leftovers. “The men carried everything to the church buses, and drove away,” Jeanne recalls.  “They were going to go door to door, to make sure no one in the area had missed Thanksgiving dinner.” The women went back to the empty kitchen and, still somewhat dazed, scoured, tidied—and compared notes.

“Was it my imagination…?”

“No, I saw it too—the turkeys seemed to—to multiply!”

“But we had only six or seven.  How…?”

“Two thousand,” Jeanne murmured.  “I think we fed almost two thousand people.”

Just then a knock sounded on the kitchen door.  A volunteer opened it to a man, a woman and eight young children, all shabbily dressed.  “We’re a little late,” the man acknowledged shyly.  “Would you have anything left from dinner?”

Oh, no!  The women glanced around the spotless kitchen.  All the food was gone—they had put it on the buses themselves.  But they couldn’t turn this hungry group away.   “Come and sit down,” one helper led the family to a table, while the others quickly conferred.  Perhaps there was a store open, or a restaurant in town where they could buy something…

Suddenly someone pointed.  “Look!”

The others turned to stare.  Sitting on a counter in plain view was a freshly baked loaf of bread.  It had not been there moments before, Jeanne knew.  But no one had come to the kitchen except the family, and they had been empty-handed.

“How did we miss this?” Jeanne’s friend cried in astonishment.  She had found an industrial-sized can of green beans and corn in a cupboard.  Another woman peeked under a cabinet.  There on a shelf she had previously wiped clean now sat a large tray of dressing with big chunks of cut-up turkey in it.

“We packed up the containers and sent the family home to enjoy their holiday,” Jeanne says.  Then, tears spilling down their cheeks, the women praised the Lord for His wonderful care. They had offered Him an early birthday present, by caring for the least of His children.  But He had multiplied their gift a hundred-fold, and given them a Christmas they would never forget.