Hey everyone! So this week has been amazing so far! God has shown me through this trip that “coincidence” is not a word in his vocabulary! We traveled to the Christ United Methodist Church in Illinois on Sunday night. The church welcomed us with a greeting posted on their church sign, and many posters hung on their walls. I was also very impressed to find out that they were giving away two sets of 4 box seat tickets to a St. Louis Cardinals game (to help encourage attendance). I thought that was pretty nice of them to do for us, but I quickly forgot when it was time to set up.
I knew God was going to be at work in this place after hearing numerous “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” from the audience right after our first skit! =] I was so excited I could hardly wait to perform and see what God was going to do. The performance went wonderfully, even though I forgot yet again to exit off the correct side of the stage! :-p (sorry Laura=]). After we received a standing ovation from the congregation, the pastor came up to announce the raffle drawing for the tickets (which I had forgotten about ;)). The pastor explained the rules, and said he needed someone out of the choir to help him. He scanned the choir loft to look for someone to choose, and his eyes fell on me on the first row (I raised my hand of course ;)). I told him I was super shy, so I probably wasn’t the person for the job! =] (yeah right! I’m Donna Thackerson’s daughter… do you think I even know what the word shy means???)
When I got up on the stage, he asked me to pick a number 1-110. My favorite number has always been #10. I use it for all my sports numbers, and everything. So naturally, the first number that came to my mind was 10. I hesitated though. I don’t know if I should pick that number, because it’s so low, I thought¸ I don’t know God… For some reason, I still just had this feeling. So, I picked it! =] I heard clapping, and a little old lady timidly raise her hand on the third row. As she was hobbling up to collect the tickets I caught myself thinking, Well that was dumb Breanna, she probably doesn’t have the slightest clue about baseball. Those tickets are just going to go to waste! The pastor asked me to pick one more number, and I had already made up my mind to pick the most random number possible!!! Well, the first number that popped into my mind was 73. 73?? What kind of stupid number is that Breanna?? Way to go stupid…
Next thing I know, a super excited lady is walking down the aisle ranting about how excited she was because she has never won anything before. This of course put a smile to my face, and I went and sat back down on the pew. Noah turned to me and said, “You just had to pick 73 didn’t you?” I had no clue what he was talking about (as usual :-p) so I asked why. “Because it makes 10…. 7 plus 3 makes 10!” I thought it was a pretty funny coincidence how they both turned out to be my number, but I thought nothing of it.
When everyone was cleaning up, a lady came up to ask me all kinds of questions about our choir, and to tell me how great we were. I saw the old lady that won the tickets talking to Mrs. Susan out of the corner of my eye. Yet again, I was totally ignorant of what was going on, because I just thought she was doing the same thing the lady I was talking to was doing. A little while later Mrs. Susan came up to me a little teary eyed. She proceeded to tell me that the lady wanted her to make sure she told me her story….
The lady had decided earlier in the day that she was going to win the tickets. She just had to… “All you need is faith,” her friend told her. So she prayed, and put her faith in God. You see, she didn’t want the tickets for herself; she wanted to give them to her daughter, who was just diagnosed with cancer. She didn’t have long to live. All that the mother wanted was to be able to get tickets so that her daughter could spend precious quality time with her husband and children. After she heard the number 10 called, she sat in disbelief and slowly raised her hand. She finished her story with tears in her eyes, making sure Susan told her story to “that precious girl.”
God pretty much hit me in between the eyes with a 2x4 on that one… I never knew that God could use something as simple as my “lucky” number to touch an entire family with a dying mother. As for the #73… I also figured out God has a sense of humor…=]

I hope yalls week is as blessed as mine has been so far…

With love,
*breanna*