Cell phone

So...
I lost my cell phone on a bus last week...
A little frustrating when I first realized what had happened, not gonna lie.
I went through this whole "lost and found" Christian analogy lesson in my head, ya know, trying to smooth away all the angry feelings and let even this be an occasion for joy. LOL... right. Went through all the excuses in my head - oh, it's okay, it was a fairly cheap phone anyway... ah, but I liked my cheap, simple phone... ah man, I lost all my messages and contact info... ah shucks, do I really need to pay for a new one... hey, I can't get ahold of anyone tonight, I literally know no one's number but my own... hey... it's actually kind of nice for once to be out of such close contact with everyone who may "need to get ahold of me."

Soooo... the next day, God sent an encouragement my way - a HUGE, unexpected, overflowing care package from some dear friends of mine. Wow... what a blessing. And with the card, there was a check for exactly the cost of the phone I had lost... whoa. Okay God, tears... yup, the tears of joy, let them overflow.

And then... the search for a new phone. I was quite excited when I realized that at least I would be able to keep my same number so I don't have to tell everyone else a new number! And then I relentlessly tugged away at my "tight, Dutch" nature, and decided to splurge a bit on a "pretty" nice phone since I haven't bought anything for myself in awhile, and a few friends told me with their gifts that I should do exactly that at some point while I was here. Sooooo... I got a new phone - and it's a "jewel." Literally... the Motorola Jewel. pretty cool. :) And the best part was - I got to make another new friend - the girl who worked at the COSMOTE shop. She helped me for a long time that night, explaining things about how the phone system works that I hadn't understood so clearly before. And after that, I told her to enter her name into my phone as my first new contact... :) Her name was Natassa - the same name as one of my other really, really great friends here in Greece! It made me smile, really big. Thanks for another fun relationship that I could start with another beautiful Greek girl.

Okay God, thanks for greatly redeemed a mildly frustrating situation. :)

And then today when I heard of how a friend of the ministry's house got broken into last night - and so many things stolen - like a new laptop, camera, money, etc... I thought to myself, whoa... and I just had to deal with the very minor stress of losing a cell phone. What can I say to encourage this family? I could think of nothing except how surely I know that God somehow redeems every single minor or major frustrating, awful, evil, upsetting situation in this world for good and for his glory. I pray that this family will somehow be comforted by that powerful truth.