“Our God is an awesome God” in French is a favorite at our Friday-night meetings where we sing, pray and have a story time. Our God is truly an awesome God, and He loves to answer prayers. He uses us to answer other people’s prayers, and He answers our prayers, sometimes before we even ask, as a recent experience reminded us.

On Dec 26 a neighbor of ours, a priest with some European connections, asked Toussaint if he would help him unload a shipping container he had received a while ago. Wheelchairs, crutches, boxes of toys and books and much more emerged from the depths of the container. Some of the boxes were ruined by humidity, and some things were scattered. Toussaint took a loose doll and gave it to a little girl who was standing there watching.

Just that morning, the priest had taken a short walk and had seen Toussaint at our recently finished classroom. This past year, we received some funds from people who wanted to support our ministry to children. After returning from furlough, we built this classroom to provide a place and books for neighborhood kids to study, as well as a meeting place for any future projects or seminars. The priest was quite impressed when he saw it. Later, when Toussaint started bringing out boxes of books from the container, the priest said, “Take whatever you think could be useful.” Our classroom is still totally empty, and we hadn’t even given the library a thought yet. And now we had about a dozen boxes of beautiful French kids’ books!

The next day, Toussaint went back to the priest’s house. On the way, he met the mother of the girl to whom he had given the doll. “Thank you so much for the doll you gave my daughter!” she said. “I need to tell you the rest of the story.” This Catholic lady had a cross next to her little house. One day she saw her daughter kneeling in front of the cross and heard her praying to Jesus, asking for a doll. The lady wished she could help answer her daughter’s prayer, but she was a single mother with very little money. The very next day, she was amazed when her girl came home with a doll! She knew God had answered her prayer.

During the holidays, two ladies from Belgium visited the priest. One day, I made whole-grain bread and sent Toussaint over with a loaf to give to the ladies, since I know how easily visitors tire of baguettes—the only kind of bread available around here. When he got there, the ladies were in the kitchen fixing a supper of canned fish, vegetables and baguettes. When he gave them the bread, their faces lit up, and they told him he had been sent by God. One of the ladies, who was visiting Africa for the first time, said she had been extremely homesick for good bread. They even took pictures of Toussaint and the bread! The next day, they came over to thank me. They also visited our classroom, and it turned out that they were representatives of the aid organization that regularly sends containers to the priest. They saw that we had received some of the box from the last shipment, and they immediately promised us more books!

We truly serve an awesome and wonderful God. He provides before we can even ask, and He uses us to answer people’s prayers and bring them joy. May the Holy Spirit continue to use us for God’s glory, and may He direct us in our daily activities and interactions.

• Twitter