hilarious givers

i've seen the Lord provide before.
in small ways, in big ways
in subtle ways and obvious ways
in ways asked for and, by human standards, ways that are just plain wierd
but never like He is lately.

Like all schools, this one has some students that can't afford outreach, a mystery both daunting and exciting that's rapidly approaching our avid missionary-to-be's. some need only a couple hundred dollars and some a couple thousand to make this trip possible and turns out God's not even remotely phased by this "deficit".
this is just a couple testimonies as to what God's up to.

there's a white board in the middle of our lecture hall/family room/dining area/foozeball arena/anything-else-social area. On it is a list of ten or so names of students who owe money for outreach. The leaders wanted people to know who needed what so the staff and students would know how to pray as well as how to give. almost hourly, i get to watch with a smile as the numbers go down (it's almost like the stock market, except no smile there).

there's a girl here who owes a couple thousand dollars before she can head off to Bangladesh. every penny she gets is put toward outreach and she's been praying like crazy for God to move. She found 800 dollars placed in her journal the other afternoon. Immediately, the Lord asked her to give it someone else, so she did. no one knew she gave this money away... (well i mean except for me... and now all of you) = ) In only a day, she received another 800 dollars from various anonymous people on the base, some staff, some students.
I love that. If we keep open hands open, God will always fill them. He's just good like that.

another girl here was blessed with every dime she would need for outreach before she even got here, which is amazing. Normally, the students send out tons of support letters, make heaps of phonecalls, scrounge under couch cushions, collecting each dollar sometimes up to the day of their flight. She wrote support letters too. and the money she received, she gave away to those who needed it.

another guy here (this one is my favorite) had a debt of 3,374 big ones. This is before the white board was even posted, nobody really knew how much everyone owed. He was going to bed and there was only one other student in the room. He starts to climb into his bunk and he sees a $100 dollar bill sitting on his pillow. He turned and asked the student if he had given it to him. the student said no and he didn't know who did. he started at getting into his bed again but in the same spot as before, he saw a few more $100 dollar bills. Now he's freakin' out.
"dude, was this you?"
"no man"
he felt something at his feet and looked down to see a small stack of even more hundreds. the two students sat on a bed and counted it all out: 20 of them in all.
TWO. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. right there and no one knows how it got there or how he didn't notice it all at once. in all honesty, myself, this student and some others i've talked to on base, believe that the Lord just stuck His good arm down into the finite and placed a 100 dollar bill on his pillow. When he saw how excited His beneficiary was, He must have thought
"ah what the heaven, i'll give him some more."

a week later, a thousand more came in the mail for him from someone who couldn't afford it but somehow did. 3000 dollars in one week!

{you know what the craziest part is. as i was typing this, there was a knock on my room door. it was this student. he asked if i could come talk to him. He wanted to pray and prophesy over me, you know what he ended up praying for? my finances. he had NO IDEA i was writing this.}

God's just so flippin' cool it blows me away sometimes.