Last Christmas (1999), I won a single range gas stove at the company Christmas party. I had no need for it, so I left it in my room, unwrapped and forgotten for the whole year.

Two weeks before this Christmas, I spied the package sitting on my bottom shelf, so I took it out, dusted it off, and brought it to church to donate the stove to the Flying Medical Samaritans. They’re a group of Christian missionaries in Mindoro who take care of poor homeless children and run medical missions around the islands. Gerry, of the FMS, who attends at our church, accepted the stove and said he would see if anyone needed it.

The following week, Gerry approached me and said that a pastor ministering to villagers on one of the more remote islands of the Visayas had been needing just what I gave: a single-range gas stove, and he had been overjoyed to receive it when Gerry arrived by plane.

I’m glad that God is constantly working in our lives. What if I had just decided to let the gas stove rot on my shelf till it wasn’t fit for anything but the garbage? (It’s happened to a few of my things before.) But just when someone needed it, he sent it through me. Praise God!