The last blessing in Malawi

We are (long since) back in the States, and have had many opportunities to share this story in person, but I felt strongly that we should close the Malawi story with the last blessing that we received from the Lord there. It was a staggering event, and we have blessed many others by sharing it. Let me set the stage first...

We were packing to leave the country on Friday night, and I had laid out 2 receipts on the bed, which were for large purchases I had made on materials that would be needed for the completion of the slab pouring - I had paid the companies but the materials were not yet picked up, to reduce the amount of money (and thus, temptation) left in the hands of our dear Malawian pastors. All of that to say that these receipts were the only proof that I had purchased these supplies.

We had purchased a large number of souvenirs for family members, and we decided to lay them out on the bed and pray over them, breaking any spirit curses that may have been placed on them during their manufacture and sale (a fairly common practice). We laid the pieces out on the bed, and prayed over them, then packed the souvenirs in our suitcases, among the clothes so that we would minimize breakage. I then went to the place where I had put the receipts, and only found one of the two. The smaller one, for purchase of the steel grid that would be used in the slab, was entirely missing. We searched high and low, went through all of the suitcases that we had packed, and found nothing. I finally gave up, very reluctantly, since I had been emphasizing to the pastors the need for responsibility - and found some other paperwork that I thought would at least make it possible to get the steel.

The following morning, I confessed my loss of the receipt to the pastors (humbling), and gave them what I had, then headed to the airport. We arrived there with 15 pieces of luggage, between 8 suitcases, 4 backpacks, a briefcase, a laptop, and a guitar case. All went through the x-ray machines, and all were accepted, but the man at the machine "randomly" selected one of the suitcases - Wanda's clothes. She was not too happy about it, but the suitcase was opened, then the man indicated where in the suitcase he wanted to see, so we pulled aside several pieces of clothing, revealing a small bag with a souvenir in it - a stone chameleon that we had placed in a bag because a small piece had broken off and needed to be kept for gluing. We opened this one small bag, and there was the chameleon, and there was the receipt! Statistically, the odds against this occurrence where so tiny that we knew that we were being given just one more gift from the Lord, who had shown Himself so mighty during the entire trip, and was waiting to give us just one more blessing. God is the God of the large and the small!