Tender Mercies yield Great Miracles!

I can’t believe the last few weeks of life. Everytime life seems to be getting too hard, or I don’t know how we’re going to manage money, or moving, or food, or whatever some miracle falls from the sky and we can’t believe it. I certainly have seen the hand of the Lord in mine and Chance’s lives, and we are SO GRATEFUL! To share some quick experiences this past weekend we went down to Provo to pick up furniture of ours from Chance’s parents house. We were really stressing about spending $90 to rent a little U-Haul Trailer when Chance’s old bishop showed up and offered us his trailer which fit about as much as a small u-haul would have anyways. AMAZING! And it all fell together so nicely. We had planned to leave for Provo at about 8am, which means we would have got there about noon and probably would have had a little u-haul by 3, but we were running late and ended up not getting out of town til about 11. This put us there right before Chance’s bishop showed up, which opened the opportunity for him to offer his trailer to us. AMAZING!One of the reasons we were late getting to Provo is because we were able to go look at a mattress a guy was selling in Idaho Falls, we anticipated buying it from him and told him we’d pick it up when I could get some help from one of our firefighter friends (with a truck). When I told Chris (one of the Captains here at the Fire Department) about needing to pick it up he was willing to and we made arrangements for that. He showed up at the fire department to get the money to pay the guy with, and to my surprise he had a new mattress, box spring, and frame on the back of his truck to take over to our apartment. I was so overwhelmed. I distinctly remember him nudging me toward the truck to get in and take the mattress, I was just awestruck at how kind the people in my life are.The topper came today, the eve of Christmas Eve… I have been working for about an hour to help a needy family provide dinner and gifts for their family. A cop came in (which is pretty usual for here) and said he had something for Mandy. We went out to his patrol vehicle and there were two big boxes of food. The wheels in my head immediately went to this needy family, the food bank had already sent some over! But, why did they drop it off with the sheriffs office? The officer then proceeded to say, “You’re the one that’s newly married, right? I’m supposed to give this to the newly married Mandy, is there another one here?” lol. So we bring these big boxes in, and there’s like 15lbs of potatoes, rolls, a ham, stuffing, tons of canned goods, jam, an apple pie, 4lbs of hamburger meat, it’s so much food!!! I was nearly in tears when I sat looking at it and telling Chance about it.. it’s just simply amazing. And I’m in awe this holiday season, and while me and Chance do not have a lot of family around right now, but we’re having an INSANELY blessed first Christmas together as a family together.. it’s just wonderful and I can’t even express how grateful I am for the blessings we’ve been receiving, and how they’re working out to teach us to be patient and faithful. I am absolutely astounded and couldn’t keep such amazing happenings to myself. God does live, and he does love and he knows our needs and he has everyday angels on this Earth acting by the spirit to bless others beyond any measure they may ever be able to realize they are doing. This church is true, prayer is real, and tender mercies yield huge miracles! I know that to be true more now than I have ever before.