I hope that my sharing our Memorial Box stories have inspired some of you to start your own Memorial Box. If you are new to this, you can read my original MBM post to see what it’s all about. I just love how our box is filling up with standing stones and will rejoice when we have to add another box!
Here is our story for tonight. With family and friends living long distances away and our love of travel we often are gone for 3-4 weeks on our vacation trips. In 2004 we planned a 3.5 week long road trip out to the Northwest, down the Pacific Coast and back through the middle of the country. Normally we just ask our neighbors to water plants and feed the cats for us, but on this particular occasion we felt it was important to find house sitters. We asked around and through some friends we heard of a family that could help meet our need. They had just sold their house and had purchased an RV and planned to travel around the country for a while before settling down again. They needed a place to stay for three weeks. Yes, the same three weeks we were going to be gone! No money was necessary to pay them as we were also doing them a favor. That in and of itself is a God thing, but there is more.
On only day two into our trip our house sitters called with the news that water was coming in our basement. This wasn’t just a trickle either, it was from a crack in the main water pipe that brought water into the house. If we had not had people staying in the house we can only imagine the terrible damage that would have awaited us when we returned home. Because of God’s provision, we had minimal damage. Our house sitters were able to get a temporary fix on things until we returned home and could take care of things properly.
This particular vacation was the only time we have ever had a house sitter. We definitely saw God’s hand working to minimize the damage to our home and are grateful for His nudging to get house sitters. Another neat aspect of this story is that this happened during the year that Chris and I spent praying for God’s guidance within our family and were asking Him if adoption was the direction in which He wanted us to head. Our house sitters had four grown children and had adopted a fifth child in later years. Their adopted son was with them to experience our little “flood”. In getting to know them before they stayed in our house, we definitely had our heartstrings pulled closer to adoption. He is good!
So in our Memorial Box tonight we placed a PVC pipe similar to the pipe that was repaired going into our house.
