God Bless

[Guest guest]

elr: by their surnames, it seems there are a number of hispanics

(filipinos?) in the list. i wonder if you would have some kind of list

demographics, leighann =P

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LIZI SANTIAGO writes:

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Live your life so you won't be ashamed to

leave your family parrot with the town gossip

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[Guest guest]

I just want to say , Merry Christmas everyone, wherever you are . We all share a bond and we should be thankfull for that. Bryce and Ruths story is right.I know its hard. It is for me. I have been crying all evening and my mold illness isnt good right now. But this group is like all holding hands. And Im putting out mine and my heart and Gods Blessings to all of you.

God Bless,

Janet

[Guest guest]

Thank you. I loved this. :-)

god bless

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and

just 75

cents in my pocket. Their

father was gone..

The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.

Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.

Whenever

they heard his tires crunch on

the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.

He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries. Now that he had

decided

to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either.

If there was a welfare system in effectin southern Indiana at that

time, I

certainly knew nothing about it.

I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best

homemade dress. loaded them into

the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job.

The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our

small

town. No luck.

The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I

tried to

convince whomever would listen

that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.

Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town,

was

an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck

stop. It

was called the Big Wheel..

An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the

window

from time to time at all those

kids. She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until

seven in

the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.

I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for

people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar

a night.

She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be

asleep This

seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.

That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all

thanked God for finding Mommy a

job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.

When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her

home

with one dollar of my tip

money--fully half of what I averaged every night. As the weeks went by,

heating bills added a strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old

Chevy had

the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak.

I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning

before I could go home.

One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and

found

four tires in the back seat. New

tires! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new

tires.

Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.

I made a deal with the local service station. In exchange for his

mounting

the new tires, I would clean

up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor

than it

did for him to do the tires.

I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't

enough..

Christmas was coming and I knew

there would be no money for toys for the kids.

I found a can of red paint and started repairing and

painting some old toys. Then hid them in the basement

so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning..

Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the

boys

pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.

On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big

Wheel.

These were the truckers,

Les, , and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.. A few musicians

were

hanging around after a gig at the

Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars

all

just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and

then left

to get home

before the sun came up.

When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas

morning I

hurried to the car. I was

hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get

the

presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut

down a

small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was

still

dark and I couldn't see much, but

there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a

trick

of the night? Something

certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I

reached the

car I peered warily into one of the

side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement.

My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all

shapes

and sizes. I quickly opened the

driver's side door, crumbled inside and kneeled in the front facing the

back

seat.

Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole

case of

little blue jeans, sizes

2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the

jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy

and nuts and

bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for

baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes.

There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour.

There was hole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there

were

five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.

As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the

most

amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I

will never

forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.

....Yes, there were angels in = Indiana that long-ago December..

And they all hung out at the Big Wheeltruck stop....

THE POWER OF PRAYER. God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar.

You maybe going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready

to

bless you in a way that only He can. Keep the faith.

My instructions were to pick four people that I wanted God to bless,

and I

picked you.

Please pass this to at least four

people you want to be blessed and a copy back to me. This prayer is

powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive. There is no

cost but a lot

of rewards.

Let's continue to pray for one another.

Here is the prayer:....

Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and

email buddies reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of

Your

love and power.

I know I picked more than four, so can you