Today, my family and I went to work at His Helping Hands. HHH, as it is also called, is a local ministry run by our church that provides clothing, food and furniture for those who cannot afford it. We had fun sorting shoes and helping keep the shelves filled for those who were looking for shoes. This ministry holds a special place in both my heart as well as my families. When I was eleven years old, while my family was building our new house, someone saw the plans dad had drawn for our house and asked him if he had ever considered doing it for a living. This gave mom and dad the idea to start a side business of drawing house plans for people. A few months later, while we were still working on our home, (we were doing a lot of the work ourselves) my dad lost his job. The company he had been working for was downsizing and his position was one they no longer needed. God provided though, and a friend at church had need of the kind of work dad had been working in and hired him. During this whole time my dad was starting his side business of designing homes.
Nine months later however, the friend from church came to dad and said that he hadn't had the need he was expecting for this form of work and needed to let dad go. We had just moved into our new home and the form of work dad had always previously worked in could no longer be found in our home town. Mom and dad really prayed about where God wanted us to go and felt God telling them it was time to take the part time design business full time. When dad told his former boss this he told dad that it was impossible, we would never make enough money to survive. Trusting God though, mom and dad stepped out on faith and took the design business full time with only one builder they were designing for.
I remember as a young child sometimes talking with my sisters wondering how we were going to make it, but God always provided just in time. I have grown to look back at this time as a special time of growth, for through the hardships, my family and I learned to trust God at a whole new level. It was one thing to say that we trusted God for our daily bread when a company was giving a monthly salary. It took our faith to a whole new level when we truly had no idea where the next pay check was coming from. During this time we saw many miracles take place and I would like to take time to share just a few of the many that happened.
One Christmas, I was fourteen and we had been running the business for a few years at this point. The past few Christmas's had been hard, but there had still been presents under the tree. This Christmas though, mom and dad took my sisters and me aside and said that the money just wasn't there for Christmas this year. However, they had one present they really wanted to give us and when they hopefully got the money later in the year, they were going to give it to us then. My sisters and I were fine with this, after all, the true reason of Christmas is celebrating Christ's birth, not presents. At church, the Sunday right before Christmas, we had to slip in late and sat in the second to last row in front of an older woman we had not previously seen. After church she started talking to my mom and told her that watching us had blessed her greatly. She asked if she could give each of us a small gift, but we were not allowed to look at it until after she had left. My mom said yes, thinking it would be just a small piece of candy. After she had left, we opened our hands to find folded, really tiny, a ten dollar bill for each of us. Mom started crying and told us, she and dad had wanted to give us these sewing baskets we had been looking at for Christmas, but they didn't have the money. The sewing baskets were just ten dollars. God had seen the desires of my parents and my sisters and my hearts and sent us the Christmas present we had wanted so badly. We never saw that lady again, but I look forward to the day in heaven when I can tell her how God used her to bless us so greatly.
Another time, when I was about sixteen, I believe, our family did not have the money to make the monthly grocery trip. Mom had a turkey left from Thanksgiving in the freezer we could eat for lunches and dinners, but we had nothing for breakfast, not even eggs. God once again intervened. Just as He says in Psalms, that the righteous shall not be out begging for bread, He supplied us with three loaves of bread for breakfast! We had gone to church on Wednesday night and my grandma had been baking in the kitchen and decided to bring some to us. She had no idea the extent of our financial problems, we were always very careful to not let anyone know about what our needs were. It was more fun to see how God would provide and later we just enjoyed telling people what God had done for us. We were able to eat breakfasts from that bread for the rest of the week until dad got paid the following week and we were able to go shopping for more groceries.
I have a lot of stories in the food department, so here is another one. This story actually became repeated twice, so I will just tell about the first time. Once again we were out of money to buy groceries. While there had been enough to pay the bills, none had been leftover for a much needed grocery trip. The pantry was empty as was the freezer and refrigerator and mom and dad didn't know what they were going to do. As they walked to the mail that day, knowing that there would not be any checks to be found, they found a card in the mail box. Inside the card was an anonymous typed note saying that God had placed our family on someones hearts and they felt led to give us this gift card. It was a two hundred dollar Walmart gift card. More than enough to provide the food we would need for that month! We never have found who sent that gift card, or the one that came a year later when we were in the same circumstances. We just know that God provided for us when there seemed to be no way.
I could go on and on about stories like this, but this post is already getting long and I haven't had a chance yet to tell the stories about what God did today! By seeing my past, you can now begin to understand why the ministry of His Helping Hands means so much to us. While HHH was not one of the forms God used to rescue us in one of our many times of need, it is a way He has used to help many others. God has, since our troubled times, blessed us so that we no longer wonder where the next meal is coming from, but for many, they still face this problem.
Today, while restocking the shoe shelves, mom heard one of the women worrying about how she could not find a pair of shoes her size, and she really needed some new shoes. Her time was almost up and she was going to have to leave empty handed. Going up to her, mom asked if she could help her. The lady told mom her problem and getting her size, mom went back to the stock room to find her a pair of shoes. She brought out some pairs and the lady tried on one of the pairs and it fit perfect. It was just like Cinderella. God had provided her the pair of shoes she so desperately needed, just in the nick of time.
During the morning four people accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!!! One of the women who became a Christian immediately turned to her husband who only spoke Spanish and told him about Jesus and he accepted Christ as his savior as well! It is for reasons like these two that I love getting to go to His Helping Hands. I love to not only get to see and be a part of helping people who are in positions similar to where we once were, I even more so love getting to see people discover Jesus as their Savior.
Blessings, Michelle
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