God Stories from Our People

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February 20, 2010
My name is Joyce and this is my God story of how I was blessed and given an opportunity to witness while shopping at Wal-Mart. My church, Southside of Andalusia, challenged us to participate in the “Buckets of Hope” project to feed the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. In response to this challenge I went to Wal-Mart to buy the specified items to fill my bucket. After selecting and placing many of the items in my cart I realized I had failed to write down the size of the boxes of spaghetti noodles required. So there I was taking up aisle space while trying to use my Blackberry to determine if I needed the 1 lb or 2 lb boxes. Anyway, I am not even sure just how I began a conversation with a lady shopper. The conversation probably began by me saying something about how cute her baby girl was and me apologizing to her for blocking the aisle. I told her my church was collecting food buckets to ship to Haiti to help the earthquake victims and I was trying to look up the list of items required. She commented how wonderful she thought that was and began to share how God had blessed her this past year. She stated that she had been out of work for a long time but was now employed. Then she said she had a thirteen year old son from her first marriage and had been blessed this year with the birth of her three month old daughter. She went on to share even more details about her life struggles but stated that through it all God was good.

Then something unexpected happened. With tears in her eyes she pulled a ten dollar bill from her pocket and asked if I would use that to help send the buckets. I told her $10 was the exact amount needed to pay the shipping on one bucket and that I would indeed turn the money into the church. She said she wished she had more to give. I told her God would bless her offering not for the amount but because it was a gift from her heart.

I assumed she attended church regularly based on her fast response to share how God had blessed her and her desire to donate money. As I began to share my testimony and questioned her I discovered she was not attending church at all. I took this opportunity to invite her to my church and made sure she knew where the church was and what time the services began. My prayer is that God will continue to open my eyes to see each opportunity presented to me to share my faith and let others know about God’s love for them.

For more information about the “Buckets of Hope” project to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti go to their website http://alsbom.org/haiti

February 16, 2010 - from one of our pastors
Churches in Covington County are participating in the “Baby Bottle Campaign” to help our local “Sav-a-life” Crisis Pregnancy Center of Covington County. Participating churches hand out Baby Bottles and individuals or families take them home, fill them with coins and/or currency and bring the bottles back for the church to return to Sav-a-life and what was an empty baby bottle hopefully lcomes back as a bottle full of monetary hope to provide services to young expectant mothers in our area.

In our church there is a couple with no money to share. It takes all that they have just to live from day to day. So watching them select an empty baby bottle, I wondered what they could do to help this worthy cause. Church members were give three weeks to gather their money and then bring the bottles back on Valentine Sunday. One week after this couple who have never been blessed with children of their own took that empty bottle they brought it back. When they handed it to me, their pastor, they apologized that they could not get all the money in the bottle. The bottle was completely filled with coins and they resorted to a neat zip-lock clear bag to put in all the paper money. A crisp $20 was the outside denomination showing through the clear bag.

They reported that having no money of their own they went to friends, neighbors and people they met in local business places and told the story of Sav-a-life needs. I returned the bottle and took the bag to Sav-a-life. When they counted this couple’s efforts they found a total of $95.00. This is a great gift given by those who truly care.