Parlor Grand, a new job, selling house..miracles continue..

Friends of ours called and said that the couple they’d been house sitting for were moving and wanted to sell their 1949 AB Chase Parlor Grand Piano and asked if we wanted to buy it for $200. I didn’t need a Grand Piano but I had a feeling that God was supplying it to us at that price to be able to resell at a time down the road when we’d need the money. We had an appraiser look at it and it was in perfect condition. Sure enough some months later we had no idea how we would pay our taxes so after talking it over we decided to put it in the classified ads for $2,000. Before Bill got home that afternoon I suddenly felt like I needed to call the paper and lower it to $1500. When Bill walked in the house the first words out of his mouth were, “I think you need to call the paper and lower the price to $1500.”

One couple came to see it and bought it and we were able to pay our taxes!
We had gone to a financial counselor and when she looked over our paper work she asked us how long we’d been living like this. We told her that it had been 3 years. She was incredulous, and she asked us if we’d ever considered bankruptcy.

GM had offered to send Bill to school to train for a different career and he had chosen the field of nursing He became an LPN and was working at St. Joe’s in Syracuse but we still weren’t able to make ends meet. I knew the verse in the Bible that says, “If anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally, without finding fault”. So I spent a week asking. I had also learned that when I was in a crisis that I needed to fast at least one meal in the day and use that time praying. I told the Lord that I didn’t understand how bankruptcy would be part of His will for our lives, but if he didn’t come through for us that week that we’d begin the process.

A couple of days later we had a phone call from a man that Bill had worked with at GM. He was working as the Human Resource person for a big air conditioning company in Auburn. He asked me what Bill was doing and when I told him he asked me if he liked his job. I told him that he loved nursing. He said that there was an opening in the plant and the first person he thought of was Bill and he knew that Bill would be the perfect person for the job. I remember thinking, “If this works out we will just have experienced another miracle that came about through direct divine intervention.” Bill went in for an interview and called him back for a 2nd interview. The absolutely amazing thing is that the position did not exist in the entire world wide cooperation. They wanted to create it and it had to be passed through corporate headquarters first, and they wanted Bill to fill the position. After the 2nd interview on a Friday we had to wait until Tuesday for the answer. On Tuesday we received the news that the position had been created and Bill was now employed with a salary where he was making even more than he did at GM. God had once again done “abundantly beyond what we were able to ask or think.”
I was elated but I had the overwhelming sense that this would only be for a time and that God had been preparing us through these difficult years for a different plan He had not revealed to us yet.

During that time my mother who had progressed with Alzheimer’s disease came to live with us. She stored her things at our place and spent two years living between her 4 children. I had gotten a part time job being a monitor on the school bus for a local school.

One day I got a call from Bill while he was driving the hour home from work. He asked me if I was sitting down. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “What if I told you that God wants me to prepare for full time Christian ministry?” I paused and then replied, “I’d ask you if you were finally tired of being in the belly of the fish.” He had heard from many people through the years that he had missed his calling and needed to be a pastor. Bill had no interest as doing it as a career. He had always said, “If God wants me to be a pastor he’ll tell me.” He had been feeling more and more convicted about it and this day he talked to God and said, “If you want me to be a pastor I am willing.” Immediately God let him know that this was exactly what he wanted him to do.

Later we discussed how we would go about beginning the process. We thought that the wisest plan of action would be that he would go through the “Flame” program through our church headquarters where he’d do modules at different locations.

A couple of months after this Bill was called into the office at work and told that they were outsourcing his position as they could do it for a much lesser amount. Once again Bill found himself unemployed, but this time with a wonderful severance package.

I had been partnering with our pastor’s wife in prayer and when we met that week I was going to ask her to pray with me that Bill would be able to find another job. The Lord spoke clearly to my spirit and told me not to pray for him to get a job. I found it strange but what we didn’t know is that my mother was quickly coming to the stage in the disease where she could no longer travel and she couldn’t be left alone. I could keep my job as Bill would be home and he would also be able to finally complete our house. We decided that it would be the perfect opportunity for Bill to go to school full time. We’d sell our house and move to Marion, Indiana so that he could attend IWU. After the house was completed we put it on the market. What normally took 8-9 months to sell took us 6 weeks. A lady had been looking for her “dream house” for 3 years and when she walked into ours she knew that “this was it”.

To be continued..