Tender Mercy #5,879,452

This week I lost my diaper bag at Wal-Mart and it was returned to me. Now, at any Wal-Mart in America, this would probably be pretty amazing to have happen. But at the Wal-Mart I go to, this was nothing short of a miracle, particularly considering my wallet and phone were in it. You will understand why I say this if I tell you about my Wal-Mart in central Salt Lake. Now compared to other major cities in the country, Salt Lake is probably fairly clean and safe. However, our Wal-Mart does not fall into that generalization about Salt Lake. It is guaranteed (and I am NOT exaggerating) there will be a panhandler at the front entrance of the parking lot, one at the back exit of the parking lot, and about every other time I go another pan-handler comes right up to me while I am loading groceries into my car and asks for money. About once a month I am in line behind someone attempting to buy things with food stamps that are not covered by the program, and probably 40% of the people I see there shopping speak a language besides English as their first language. The point of me telling you all this is to show you just how poor the people are that shop at my Wal-Mart. I bet it serves the poorest socioeconomic group out of all the Wal-Marts in the greater Salt Lake area. That is why I was utterly shocked that my bag was there when I returned to the customer service counter nearly an hour and half after leaving my bag in a cart in the parking lot and driving away. I don't know who the good soul was that returned my bag to the store, but I really wish I could tell them thank you. There is no doubt in my mind that the Lord was looking out for me when he prompted that person to go to the store on that day at that time.

Another tender mercy this week was that Benjamin was offered another job! Although he already had a position working for an attorney this summer, the attorney had not been very honest about a number of things related to the job (the number of hours, pay, etc.) and so Benjamin had continued to look for another position in hopes he could leave his current job. After much hard work on Benjamin's part and many many prayers by our family, Benjamin was finally offered a job at a different firm here and he starts on Monday. We are so relieved that he will now be able to work for someone that (hopefully) will deal with him honestly, and the most amazing thing about his new job is that it even has the potential to continue into the fall and possibly even be a permanent position after graduation.

With events like this I can't help but feel that the Lord is so mindful of us individually. Again and again Benjamin and I have had our prayers answered and have had all things work out for our good, even situations that started out very bleak. So let us know if we can do anything for you--we need to start "paying it forward" after everything we've received!