Today did not start out well. My little good mileage Ford is not running, so I needed to take the van for errands. And the Check Engine light came on… great. It would be funny if I was not feeling so assailed by so much lately. Just last Thursday I was thanking for the Lord for how well the Ford was running. The next day, I went to take it out and could start it, but couldn’t get it to go into gear – something wrong with the gear shift.

So I started driving the van… and then the Check Engine light came on. I stopped at the garage and they said that for now all is OK and safe to drive, unless I notice anything odd in how the car handles. Rich and I had been praying about selling both the Ford and the Van and trying to get something a little better. With me working at home, we didn’t really need two vehicles, and they are both over 11 years old…

So then I opened the bill today for our cell phone and just about fainted. Apparently, all of us had been quite unaware of how quickly you can use up 1500 free minutes/month during Rich’s hospitalization. And there I was with a bill that would take half of our property taxes to pay.

I looked at the bill and all I could think was O Lord, please help us. Now what do I do? I needed that money for those property taxes… and the thought came to my mind, “call Sprint, tell them the truth, and ask them for mercy.”

Thank you God for whispering that thought in my mind, and thank you Scott, the young man who answered the phone, and Scott’s supervisor who heard what I told Scott and believed me. I had explained about Rich’s stroke and his death on Aug. 16 and asked if, in light of the fact that we had rarely come close to using our full 1500 minutes for the 3 years we had our contract, would they help us out.

And they did. They drastically reduced the bill. I still needed to pay for all the extra calls, but at far less than the standard 0.40/minute. The bill became affordable.

Thank you Lord for meeting our needs, and using Sprint to help us out.