It started at a small church in Malden, Massachusetts. Someone in the pew in front of us turned and commented about how well we sang together. They must have been desperate for choir members, because the following Sunday we were in the choir. The folks knew nothing about us. We could have been serial killers for all they knew. But they took us under their wing, and loved us dearly. Not a Sunday went by that we weren’t invited to someone’s home for dinner. We had to take a bus from our apartment to church each Sunday, and with snow on the ground and falling almost every day, this became a problem. So one of the men in the church who owned a car dealership, delivered a Volkswagen bug to our apartment one Saturday morning. He told us to pay what we could, when we could. How’s that for the deal of a lifetime? One distinct advantage to a VW bug was the location of the engine. Being in the back instead of the front, it gave us good traction on the snowy roads. On Sundays when hardly anyone else could make it to church, we were able to navigate to this little church which had won our hearts. And it didn’t take too long to pay it off. Of course this was before cars started costing as much as a house.
This is where I learned to enjoy what they called a New England Boiled Dinner. It’s one big stew pot in which you place a corn beef brisket, lots of potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage and the kitchen sink. All you need to do when it’s finished is eat it. And of course we lived too far away to travel home and then come back for the night service. So we were always offered a bedroom where we could take a nap after lunch. Everyone took naps. I believe it was a requirement for being a church member. The parsonage was right across the street from the church, so all we had to do was walk across the street.
One thing led to another by word of mouth only, and before we knew it, we were being asked to sing in surrounding churches. Most were so small that they didn’t have sound systems or even piano players, so we purchased our own sound system eventually, and traded our “bug” for a van. I was working in downtown Boston as a legal secretary and my husband was a printer/lithographer. By the way, this is not the sailor husband, in case you’re having trouble staying up. We were getting invitations to sing in the neighboring state of New Hampshire, and the love offerings were really good, so we quit our jobs and headed out into the unknown.
One of the problems was my husband’s allergies, particularly to cats. It seemed that every home where we stayed the night, had (you guessed it) a cat. So the next logical step was to get a motor home so that we could sleep cat-free. Of course the motor home was very used and had some problems which we didn’t find out about until we were on a deserted highway in the middle of nowhere. We were able to make it to a rest area and my husband, though he was an electronic genius, was no mechanic. We were sitting inside the motor home enjoying a cold drink and trying to figure out what to do next when out of nowhere, a little man in a funny yellow hat appeared and knocked on the door. We didn’t hear him drive up and were startled by his sudden appearance. He asked what the problem was and my husband told him we had no idea. He looked around under the hood and then went to his truck and returned with exactly what was needed to replace a severed fuel line. What are the chances of a little man in the middle of nowhere having exactly what was needed to repair the vehicle and get us back on the road. We were so amazed that we couldn’t thank him enough. He wouldn’t take money nor anything to drink and was gone as quickly as he had appeared. What really got us to scratching our heads is that we looked both ways down this long straight stretch of road, and we saw nothing of this man’s truck. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but asphalt.
I hadn’t given much thought to angels before this happened, but we both believed that an angel was sent by God in order to get us going to our next booking. I think sometimes we just aren’t looking and therefore we don’t see the angels that are all around us. Not long after this happened, I read Billy Graham’s book “Angels, Angels, Angels” and it was a real eye-opener. After reading this book, I am definitely convinced that this little man was an angel unaware.
sleeplessinmississippi 
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