“When we reached my stop, I got off the bus, and started walking down the hill toward my house,”  Rose says.  “I noticed an elderly couple walking slowly ahead of me.” Rose followed them.  All seemed perfectly normal.

“Then I heard a voice,” Rose says.  “Not audible, like your voice or mine.  It seemed to come from within and alongside me at the same time.”

“Reach into your pocket and take out your keys, but don’t jiggle them,” the voice said.

Rose was amazed.  Was it talking to her?  “I wasn’t frightened,” she says.  “The voice was kind and loving, as if I was walking alongside my mother.”

The voice gave more instructions.  “Hold the key in position with the notches up,” it said.

Rose’s family lived in a Victorian house with a heavy glass front door.  She realized that in this position, the key would slide smoothly into the keyhole with no delay.

By now the elderly couple—the only people left on the street—reached the corner and turned right.  Rose followed, straining to hear footsteps.  But she heard nothing, and the voice had not finished yet. “When you cross the street, don’t go down the right side of the street as you usually do,” it directed.  “Instead, go kitty-corner.”

Rose obeyed, walking at a normal pace.  What was it all about?  She was afraid to turn around, to see if anyone was behind her.  And yet a part of her still felt safe.  She approached her own block, went down the street, and then….

RUN! The voice told her. NOW!

Racing past the neighbor’s house, up the step, sliding the key smoothly into the lock, thrusting open the door and slamming it behind her..  She was in!  Rose turned back and looked through the heavy beveled glass door.

Looking back at her was a man, his hands up against the glass. She had missed him by inches.

Resisting the impulse to scream, Rose raced up the stairs.  It was dark on the second floor, since no one was home, but she raised a slat from the venetian blinds and peeked out. The man was crossing the street now, walking toward an apartment building.  Under the streetlight he turned back, and looked at Rose’s house.  Rose could see him clearly, but she had no idea who he was.  Slowly, head hanging, he walked down the hill, turned the corner and was gone. She was never to see him again.

“I wonder if he was puzzled that I got away, when I never heard his footsteps,” Rose says. He didn’t know that a very special guardian was at work.

<~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~>

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.

-

We “angels” shop at garage sales, send WalMart certificates or outgrown toys (and occasionally someone packs up a truck and just GOES.)   Occasionally we get a letter from the Cayces, updating the services we have helped to sustain.  It makes me feel as if we are doing what Mother Teresa always suggested,  “Bloom where you are planted.”

If you are already volunteering in your own community or caring for those who need you, please don’t stop.  Cayce Charities is mainly for those who are looking to get involved in something on-going, but there’s no commitment necessary.  We’ll keep you posted.

PS The address is Cayce Charities, 403 South Second Street, Thornton Arkansas 71766

And here’s the story:

On the  day that Amy Pruitt’s little boy was born, the doctors were grim.  Baby Cory had so many physical problems that he was not expected to live past a few hours.  “Don’t even hope,” Amy’s doctor told her, trying to prepare her for the loss.

But Amy was hearing a different voice inside her.  “Somehow I knew that despite his difficulties, Cory would be healthy,” she says.   And her son did make a miraculous recovery.  He was deaf, but this did not intimidate Amy.  “I had always heard that deaf children were easy to raise,” she says.  And Cory’s life seemed to prove it.

He was a bright, sunny little guy, with what seemed to be a deep spiritual connection. When Cory was about eight years old, he asked his mother if she remembered when he was a sick newborn.  “How could I forget?” Amy asked.

“Well,” Cory said, “I saw Jesus then.”

It was a wonderful story.  But could she believe it?  A few years later, Cory fell through the ice on a river, but ended up safely on shore, with no explanation of how he got there.  Later he told Amy that an angel had picked him up and placed him on the shore.  Amy had goosebumps.  The evidence supported Cory’s statement perfectly.

“ Last year a five-year-old friend of ours was in intensive care with a ruptured spleen,” Amy recalls.  “I asked Cory to pray.”  A few hours later Cory came to his mother.  “He looked as if there was a glow of some sort around him,” she says.

“I just finished talking to God,” Cory told her.  “That little kid is going to be fixed.”  The next day the boy was fine. The bleeding had mysteriously stopped in the night.  A few months later, Cory’s grandmother had a massive stroke and it seemed hopeless. Again Cory prayed, and his brother reported that Cory was glowing, and said that Grandma would be fine.  She made a complete recovery.

Just recently Amy was told that her initial belief—that deaf children are easy to raise—was not true.  In fact, most presents major challenges.  And yet “Cory has always been a very good kid, a joy and a gift in our lives,” she says.  The whole family waits to see what will happen next.

Both women were “addicts.” “We would talk about what we found and what we bought, and Mom would let me know if I had stumbled upon an especially good bargain.” One night, as they chattered on, Dale realized something. The barriers that always seemed to be between them were gone. “This call was different,” she says. “We really talked. Everything just seemed to open up and the conversation was truly mother-daughter.. When we finally hung up I noticed that we had been on the phone almost three hours.” Dale felt so good. Maybe their relationship would continue along this closer, more satisfying path.

Dale’s mother would be out of town the following Saturday, so no phone call was planned. On Monday morning, however, Dale’s brother called her. “Mom got home okay, but she’s in the hospital,” he said. “She’s had a stroke and it doesn’t look good.”

Dale was shocked. How could this happen? Quickly she made travel arrangements and soon arrived at her mother’s bedside. Her mother never emerged from her coma, and died a few days later. “Through everything, I kept thinking back to that last talk we had,” Dale says. “It was so comforting, and I was glad we had shared that good conversation.”

But life without her mother was difficult. “I really missed my mom,” she says, “and I kept longing to talk to her one more time. Sometimes I prayed that I could have a sign that all was well with her.” Dale had stopped going to garage sales too. The memories were just too difficult.

The second anniversary of Dale’s mother’s death was approaching, when Dale had an unexpected weekend off from work. Her thoughts turned to her mother as she ran errands and tried to ignore the garage sale signs that seemed to be everywhere. She would never be able to go to another one…. “I was heading back to my house when I saw a group of signs all in a row,” she says. “I intended to turn, but instead it seemed as if the car just kept going straight, following those signs.” The signs led to a particular yard, and Dale pulled up in front and stopped. Somehow she knew she was supposed to be there, but the thought didn’t keep her from trembling just a little, as she got out of the car.

At first glance, the merchandise all looked like junk that she would never buy. What was she doing here? Then she felt drawn to a particular table in the garage. Dale looked inside the box on top. A bunch of coffee cups. Why would she need those? Then—as if she was being guided—she put her hand down into the bottom of the box and pulled up yet another cup.

When she saw it, she started to cry. “Where did you get this?” she asked the woman in charge of the sale.

The woman looked it over. “I’ve never seen this before,” she told Dale.
But Dale knew it well—and so had her mother. The cup bore the logo of the college Dale had attended, a small institution six hundred miles away, one that no one in this vicinity had probably ever heard of. A cup just like this one had sat in her mother’s kitchen, a reminder of the care and concern her mother had always felt for her, despite their sometimes-difficult days.
“I know I was guided to this sale, to find the reassurance I needed,” Dale says. She bought the cup—and knows that she and her mother will meet again.

Of course Pat sees with the eyes of faith. Few of us ever receive more than that, but now and then our angels give us a little extra hug, and something physical occurs. Pat wasn’t thinking of that scenario last New Year’s Eve, however. Her daughter runs a catering business, and was serving a holiday dinner to senior citizens at their residence. Pat had volunteered to help.

“We were serving individual salads to the guests when I caught my foot on the leg of a chair and crashed down on my back,” says Pat. “The three plates of salad I had in my hands flew up in the air, and fell on some of the guests.” Several residents cried out in shock, and for a brief moment the resident supervisor wondered if she should call an ambulance. But despite the crash landing, Pat immediately got up from the floor. Not only was she in one piece, she had no pain at all. “I cleaned up the mess, continued serving, and never once felt an ache or pain,” she says.

As she continued to make the rounds, while smiling away the residents’ worry, Pat kept thinking about the fall. Although it might appear differently to the onlookers, she hadn’t landed hard, she realized. It actually felt as if she had fallen on something soft. A cloud? A pillow? A pair of wings? Suddenly Pat knew how she had escaped injury from the accident. “It was my guardian angel who cushioned my fall that night,” she says. “I feel very blessed that she made an appearance to me on New Year’s Eve.”

In fact, it was a reason to celebrate.

The island was beautiful. One morning Georgia and her husband took a walk along the beach where black lava had hardened into the water. All around the Big Island, people leave names and messages made out of white stones on this lava, so they decided to leave a message for Scott. “Aloha, Scott”(Aloha means “hello, goodbye, and love.”) 1/11/72 – 9/15/98,” it read. The couple took a picture of it and walked on.

“The next day we took my mom for a walk,” says Georgia, “and when we reached that place, she spotted the message right away.” Georgia thought it would have been washed away by the waves because it was right next to the ocean. Everyone was thrilled that the writing was still there.

On that day, the Horvaths had planned to take a twelve-hour drive around the entire island. But the night before, a neighbor had suggested they avoid a certain area. “Don’t bother to turn off at the south end of the island, to see the most southern tip of the United States,” he cautioned them. “It isn’t worth the drive on a dirt road, and nothing is there anyway.” The couple agreed. This man certainly knew more than they did about tourist attractions.

They had completed the first part of their journey, and Georgia was driving when she saw the sign: TURN HERE to see the Southern-most tip. “Remember,” said her husband, “this is where that man said to go back.”

“I remember,” Georgia said, and started to turn. Then, at the last minute, she veered the other way, bouncing down the dirt road. “We’re here,” she said to her surprised husband. “Let’s go as far as we can.”

He shrugged. Up ahead he could see more black lava, just like the kind they had seen yesterday. Just then the path ahead separated, and Georgia had to turn left or right. “My hand seemed to turn towards the left,” she says, “so this is where I went.”

They drove to the edge of the lava, and stopped. The area was completely deserted, just water splashing along the shore and once again, lots of white stone messages all over from people who had visited. “We got out of the car and started to walk,” Georgia says. “Then all three of us stopped. Ahead of us was a message written on a white stone: “Love U 2,” it said. “Scott.”

All three adults started to weep. “It was a message from Scott,” Georgia says. “We know he didn’t actually write it, but the fact that we almost didn’t go to that area, and when we did stop, it was the right place..…well, we were meant to see it.” It made their trip, and aided their mourning. Scott was not gone, they knew now, just enjoying a beautiful piece of heaven.

“On the morning of the service, I had some new batteries, just purchased, and I put them into the angel to be sure it would light up,” Debe says. “But nothing happened.” Maybe she hadn’t put them in correctly. Debe asked her husband to see if something was wrong with the batteries. While she finished dressing, he checked them out again. “You put them in right, but I did it again,” he told her. “They still won’t light.”

By now it was 9 AM and the family was to meet at the funeral home chapel at 9:30. Maybe something had broken inside the angel? But everything looked fine. “We have to go,” Debe’s husband told her. He had taken out the batteries again (although she didn’t know it) and they had run out of time. “Let’s just have the angel sitting by her photo,” he suggested as he went to start the car.

Debe was terribly disappointed. The lighted angel would have made the display so beautiful…She buttoned her coat and picked up the angel. Just one more try… She flipped the switch, and the angel lit up. Shocked, Debe turned the angel over to see if the batteries were locked in…
She opened the compartment.
There were no batteries inside.

Heart pounding, Debe looked around, and saw the 4 AA batteries on the table. She snapped them in as her husband pulled up. “Oh, you found some other batteries,” he said, looking at the angel’s beautiful glow.

“Uh huh,” Debe murmured. They were the same batteries, the ONLY batteries, she knew, but she could not tell him yet. If they had ever wondered where their mother was, they knew now that she was closer to them than she’d ever been.

A few days later, Debe told her husband what had happened. He had no trouble believing it. “Well,” he said, “that’s Mom. She wanted to have that angel at her service. And she did.”

“You see?” Debe points out. “You never know when angels are around!”

Angels don’t always announce their arrival.  And sometimes the helper is an ordinary person acting like an angel. Either way, they change our lives.  Tammy Kline would agree.

Tammy, her husband Rich and several others had embarked upon a climb on the Grand Canyon.  An experienced hiker (and married to one), Tammy had never had a serious problem climbing hills in Colorado.  But now as the group approached Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Canyon, the huge uneven steps going down the trail were about 18 inches apart.  Each time Tammy landed on one, she jarred her knee and gradually the pain began.  At first, as she soaked her leg in a cold creek along the way, she thought she would be fine. “We reached Phantom Ranch around lunch time, and I would be able to rest until our early departure the next day,” she says.  “I kept my leg iced, elevated, and wrapped.  My husband, Rich, went to the general store and bought an Ace bandage because the wrap that was in our first-aid kit wasn’t supportive enough.”  The bandage didn’t seem to help either.

But as the time passed and the pain continued, Tammy began to worry. How was she going to get out of this situation? What if her leg didn’t respond to rest?  If she needed a mule to ride, would one be available? What if she got part way up the mountain, and couldn’t go any further?  “I prayed all night that God would help me find a way out,” Tammy says.  “This trip had been Rich’s dream since I could remember and I didn’t want to let him down.”

The next morning, the hikers were on the trail by dawn. Rich set a slow pace up the Canyon and the group stopped frequently. But the rest had done little if anything to relieve Tammy’s pain.  And by the time they stopped for a break at Indian Garden, she was wondering if she could take another step.

A climber named Tom was there finishing his break.  He had passed their group earlier that morning, and now noticed Tammy’s limping. “Trouble with your knee?” he asked her.

“The wrap I’m using isn’t supportive enough,” she told him, “and every time my foot hits a rock, the pain shoots through my leg.”  She sighed, looking around.  There were rocks everywhere.

“I have an extra compression knee brace in my pack,” Tom remarked.  “Let me find it.”

An extra compression brace?  As unlikely as an extra pot of gold, Tammy thought.  And it surely wouldn’t fit—Tammy was very small, and Tom was large.  She held her breath as Tom pulled out the brace and handed it to her.  It fit her perfectly.

Tom did not vanish,as angels sometimes do.  He simply waved away her thanks, and continued up the path. The trip was still very trying for Tammy.  “But the brace, unlike the wrap, held my knee rigid and it didn’t twist every time I stepped on a rock,” she says.  “We made it to the top in about eight hours, which is within the average time span.  But I don’t think I could have made it without Tom. He saved our vacation.”  And if that’s not what angels do, what is?

For many days after this experience, Tammy could think of little else.  It was such an obvious answer to her prayers.  “I know in the depth of my heart that God answers prayers,” she says.  “And he truly listens when we talk to Him and open our hearts so we can see and understand His answers.”

Here is a link to another “earth angel,” who has made something beautiful come out of a difficult situation:

As she finished, she saw a radiant light, just ahead of her, a pinkish-gold color. Was she dreaming? Shocked, Rose watched the vision.  Where had it come from?  Rose thought of her mother, who was very ill, and decided to call her to make sure she was alright.

“I have a radio alarm clock right next to my bed,” she says. “And when I saw the time, I remember saying to myself that it was too late to call my mother and disturb her. I decided to call her first thing in the morning.”

Rose turned back to where she had seen that beautiful light, and when she saw that it was still there, she was flooded with a feeling of calm and peace. The light was so comforting, Rose let herself relax. Life had been difficult lately, especially the constant worry over her mother’s health. But now she felt herself dozing off, while the warm bright light continued to watch over her.

The next morning Rose was awakened by a phone call from her sister. “Mom was taken to the hospital by ambulance last night,” Rose’s sister said. “You’d better come.”

Because Rose lived a few hours away, she did not make it to the hospital in time to say good-bye to her mother. “But it comforts me to know that this radiant light that visited me could have been my mom or my angel assuring me that everything would be alright,” Rose says. “I learned that pink-gold radiant light or auras represent love. I know it definitely was something very beautiful.”

Rose has not seen the light again, but she is at peace. “I know my mother, and my angels, are always with me.”

“George was not comfortable about having a second surgery,” says Mary, “so we prayed that someone would help him make the right decision.”

On the evening he was admitted, George was still pondering, when a doctor came into his room. “Are you George LaGrange?” the doctor asked.
“I am,” George responded.
“I’d like to take some pictures of your eye,” the man explained. “Just follow me,”

More pictures! George had never seen this physician before, and he still wasn’t convinced he was going to have the procedure. But he followed the doctor down the hospital hallway to a door at the end. The door didn’t open easily, and the doctor had to fiddle with the doorknob, as if he didn’t know how to use it. But there were the x-ray machines in the room, and the doctor set everything up, and took the pictures. “You know,” George said, as the session ended, “I’m not really sure I need this treatment.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” the doctor pointed out. “You can do it, but in my opinion, it’s really not necessary. The condition could very well clear up on its own.”

“Really?” George was surprised. No one else had mentioned this possibility. When the doctor left, George returned to his pondering. By the time the nurse came in that morning, he had made his decision. “We had asked for someone to give us some advice,” says Mary, “and that’s what we received. George decided not to have the surgery, and he went home feeling very relieved.”

About a week later George stopped in at the hospital accounting department. He wanted to see if that last set of x-rays would be covered by his insurance. But a surprise awaited him. There was no record of any extra pictures taken. “Are you sure?” George asked. “Maybe they’re lost.”

“What was the doctor’s name?” the woman asked.
George hadn’t noticed him wearing any identification. And there was no record of his visit to George either.
The bills never turned up—and George was never bothered by his eye condition again.
“The whole experience was amazing,” Mary says. She won’t forget to ask for help the next time.