Messy Car Miracles

Two weeks ago. My OCD gets the better of me and I organize the apartment  We give a stack of Spanish Books of Mormon to the Hermanas. They find a French Book of Mormon in the stack, laugh at my obvious linguistic inadequacies, and discard the book on the back seat of our car. Despite our clean habits, the French book remains on the back seat of the car for days, the lone misplaced object in an otherwise-clean car.

Sunday morning. Romping around in boots and backpack to invite our investigators of yesterday to come to church. They aren't home (of course) and the people that we pass on our walk are highly unresponsive (as per usual) to our friendly words. I am beginning to feel discouraged.

Black man stretching his calves on the corner of or street. We stop and chat. Try the usual offer to pray. He says yes (the tide begins to change), and we pray  We ask about his relationship with God--seems an awkward question, but sometimes the Spirit is peculiar like that. For 20 minutes, Zeccharias from the Ivory Coast tells us about his life-long debate between his native Muslim faith and his learned Christian faith. His last sentence is as our open door. "And so I decided not to go to church at all. I am just waiting for someone to come to me."

We tell him that it is no coincidence that we are there. We are so bold as to think ourselves the messengers that he has been waiting for. We excitedly relate to him that we have a great gift to share.

And here we make a quick scramble through our backpacks for the ever-present floppy Books of Mormon. to our dismay, the search is futile. And so we walk with him back to our complex, where our car is full of Books of Mormon. During the course of our short walk, we describe the history of the Book of Mormon. He is eager to read it, and believes what we say about a living prophet. He is only visiting from New York, but he promises to read the book and to share it with his family. He gives us his number and then gets ours so we can reconvene in a few days.

We arrive at the car and Sister Goodfellow asks him what his native language is. "French," he says. And there, on the back seat, is a hardcover French Book of Mormon.

God works in mysterious ways.
How kind of Him to include us in His work!