A God Thing!

During the time I am in the hospital which appears to be almost a month, Koyce will not be able to stay with me. So what should she do? Should she drive home every night? The drive is too long and would be quite tiring. Should she come only a couple days a week to see me? She would never buy into this plan. Should she stay with my sister in Fremont? Well, it is still a 30-45 minute drive and then there is the bridge toll every day? So, should she stay in a hotel in the area? This would be real expensive and maybe a bit scary staying by one’s self every night.

The ideal would be to stay with someone we knew within a ten minute drive to the Stanford Hospital. Did we know any such person? The answer is—well, maybe. You see, a little over three years prior, I was preaching a series of messages entitled 40 Days of Prayer. It was a good time to deal with such a subject because this was when I had been diagnosed with cancer the first time. Then one Sunday morning, a couple walked in named Bill and Lucie Silene. They loved the series and wished that they could do the same thing in their church. I gave them all of my messages and we had a few left over devotional books that their people could work through. And guess what? They lived right by Stanford! And they told me that if I ever needed a place to stay while at Stanford, to just give them a call. They sent me a nice card and I saved it! That’s right. I have saved all kinds of encouraging notes and things over the years. So, I went to my notebook after hearing of the reoccurrence of my cancer and found that card with their address right there. I gave them a call to see if we could possibly have Koyce stay with them while I was in the hospital. However, timing was going to be a challenge. Their daughter had returned home from college and grandma was temporarily living with them. But they told me that they knew some people very close by the University in the town of Atherton.

They said that they were going to ask Bill and Marilee to see if Koyce could stay at their place. And before I knew it, Marilee was on the phone and enthusiastically invited Koyce to come and stay in their huge house. They gave us a key, free reign of the house and company whenever she needed it. And they were only 10 minutes at most from the hospital. All Koyce has to do is to drive in each morning, either park the car at the Stanford parking garage for $12 a day or drive over to the mall where they allow people to park free and then take the free shuttle to the hospital. You can guess what plan we decided to take! Besides, when she wants to get away from me, she has a place to go where she can exercise her spiritual gift! What is her gift? You probably know. It is the gift of shopping! Isn’t this all amazing. I can say only one thing. This whole situation was a God-sent. What is a God-sent? It is when you stumble across something so unexplainable and wonderful that it has to be a gift from God! This was certainly wonderful and for us, it is a God-sent. Praise the Lord!