Blessed by Books

Have you ever had anyone be an answer to prayer? A friend from church sent home a bag of books for the kids several weeks ago. She'd been clearing them out of her kids' bookshelves and thought our boys would enjoy them. I gave them the bag and they happily dug in. They never emptied the bag though, having immediately found books they wanted to read and it was put aside in the kitchen.

One Sunday morning, a week or two after receiving the bag of books, on the way to church I was thinking about Andrew's and Nicholas' wardrobe. After recently going through their clothing and seeing what didn't fit any more or what was worn out I realised they were in need of some clothing items, mainly pajamas and nice button up shirts. We don't have a lot of extra cash at the moment for clothing, and usually it happens that a friend will send a bag or two of clothes for the kids and that gets us by without having to spend a fortune on clothes anyway. Nobody had sent us any clothing in months and months though so I prayed that someone would be clearing out closets soon and think of us.

That morning, at church, I saw my friend, J, who sent us the bag of books and thanked her for them. I told her how much the boys had enjoyed the new reading material. She then asked me if the shirts fit. Hmmm? It turns out that at the bottom of this large cloth bag of books were several shirts, shorts and pajamas. We'd just not got around to emptying the bag out and didn't know there was clothing at the bottom!

When I got home I found the bag and emptied it. What a surprise to see what was there! God knew what we needed and put this in my hands even before I prayed about it. I just didn't know about it until afterward! God is so good!!!

Last Sunday, J blessed us with two more boxes of books. The kids are absolutely thrilled! There are novels and series of books and there are even a load of pop-up books. These pop-ups are not for toddlers and young children though. Many of them are science books about space, birds, dinosaurs, insects or the Olympics or motorcycles, with detailed descriptions and tidbits of information written throughout. They are gorgeous!!! We've all been enjoying reading through these books. What a treasure to have!