Tender Mercies

It's really quite amazing sometimes how the Lord seems to be involved in little things in one's life.  And if we're not careful about those subtle indicators how easy it is, at least for me, to miss the obvious.
Three cases in point:
1.  When Chuck and Kristin were coming to live in our house and take care of it, all our concerns about the cars and the house were seemingly solved.  However, 2 weeks before our mission Chuck let us know that as much as they wanted to come back to Utah and live in our house, it simply wasn't going to be possible.  And by that time, the other two fallback options were gone because they had made other plans, and who can blame them. 
Well, we were back to square one with no time to work on a good solution, when out of the blue, 2 days later, our daughter Michelle called from El Paso to say that it just so happened that a military family in her ward was retiring and moving to Salt Lake City and looking for a place to rent for a couple of years.  They are honest people and impeccable house keepers.  Michelle said she would be happy to have them live in her house, and she's a lot more particular about her house than we are.  Coincidence?  I think not.  They want to move about the middle of January.  It couldn't be a better fit.
2.  Chuck and Kristin were also going to buy our car, so the question became, "What are we going to do with our car?  Sell it?  How can we do that when we need it until we leave and we don't know exactly when that will be because of the visa problem.  Leave it for Dave to sell?  Swell; just what Dave needs; another problem to solve for Nana and Bubba.  He's already got a list a mile long.  Leave it in the garage for 2 years?  Who will watch it and take it out for a spin every couple of weeks, and put winter additives in the fuel and check the tires, etc., etc?  What if the new family needs the garage?  Shall we leave it parked out in the weather for 2 years?  None of these seemed like good options.  Well, the first day at the MTC I got a text from someone I didn't even know who said they heard I might be looking to sell my car, and his son had just returned home last week from a mission to Germany and was starting school at BYU and needed and car, and would I be interested in selling it to them, and how soon would it be available?  Well, we called Dave and it just so happened that only a couple of weeks ago he got his extra car/pickup back, so we asked him if we could borrow it until we leave, to which he said, "yes".  So Saturday when we got back from the MTC the family was waiting in our driveway and 4 hours later the car was so and we had Dave's truck parked in our garage and the money in the bank.  It was pretty amazing.  Here's a shot of the Nitro's new owners.  Really a nice family.

3.   Well if that wasn't enough, we were scheduled to perform today, Sunday, and Vivienne was having real difficulty playing the piano with her old glasses.  So recently she had ordered new glasses but when they arrived they were worse than the old ones.  Completely unusable.  We rushed back to the store and ordered a different set, without bifocals.  Friday while at the MTC we received a phone message that her glasses had arrived, so when we finished with the car and the bank we rushed to the glasses store.  It was 2:45.  However we discovered the store closes on Saturdays at 2:00.  Yep, locked up tight.  But just for fun I tapped on the door and waited.  Someone just happened to still be in the back talking on the phone.  They let us in and got Viv's glasses for her.
These might all seem like coincidences.  But I choose to believe otherwise.  I'm sure not everything will work out as planned just because we're trying to do what the Lord wants, but it sure does feel good to know we're on His team.