answered prayer
Two weeks ago we met some new friends at church: Alex, Nelly, and their one-and-a-half year old son Noah. They're from Germany, and when we met them they had been in the US only one week. Alex chatted with an easy fluency that belied his foreign-fellow position at Harvard, and Nelly spoke to us in amazingly conversational English with enough vocabulary to follow along, but enough pauses to make me think she might have a headache on the way home. We missed them the following week on account of our trip to Maine, but I prayed for them off and on during the intervening two weeks. I prayed that they would start to feel settled in their new place, that Alex would feel welcomed in his job, and that Nelly would meet new friends, especially some Germans in her area. The last part I threw in figuring that it's stressful to always be talking in a foreign language; wouldn't it be nice if she met a nice German mom her age to chat with and explain the low-downs of where to buy the best German style diapers or whatever.
So we saw them all this morning at church, and as Dan chatted to Alex about buying a used car in the US, Nelly and I talked about parenting styles in the US versus Europe.
"I haven't really meet any American moms" Nelly complained suddenly. "I want to meet some Americans to be friends with, but every time I go to the park, it's all Germans! So many Germans I meet in the last two weeks! So far I meet 4 new German friends, but only 1 American!"
Eek, I said! This is obviously all my fault. I've been praying for you to meet German women. I'll change up my tactics, clearly.
Okay, so these days there's a lot of stuff we're asking God for. Dan's desperate for more work and I'm desperate for less. I could use a little more patience and we all could use a little more sleep. But it's nice to know that God still delivers abundantly in some things just because you ask. Even if it's not exactly the right thing.