There's No Such Thing as Coincidence

Larry and I went to a friend's home last night for a, I guess you could call it, fireside. Just a small group of friends. The fireside talk was by a former Muslim who joined the church in 1998. He told us his conversion story-- from a Muslim schoolboy to a translator for LDS General Conference. He was born and raised in a place between the West Bank and Jerusalem. He traveled many, many places before he found the Church. We were just glued to everything he had to say. I am totally convinced, after listening to him, that there is no such thing as coincidence. He spoke of being beaten in a Muslim school because he asked about God. He spoke of how he wanted to get to know who God was and didn't think that Islam was the right place for him to be. He spoke of being baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece and then transported to a mountaintop for 100 days where he lived with 6 nuns and 8 monks. He had his Bible with him and studied it while he was there, but he knew that religion wasn't the place for him. He picked things out of the Bible by himself that talked of Christ's church when He was on the earth, and Jamil figured that if Christ had a church on earth today, it would be patterned after the one He had when He was on earth. He told the monks that he did not want to become a monk, so they made him a priest, set him up in a house in Athens, and gave him $500 a month with the stipulation that he did everything they told him to do. He continued his study of the Bible until one day while riding a city bus in Greece, he saw two young men with white shirts and ties on the same bus. He approached because he saw the words Jesus Christ on their badges. He asked them if they could tell him about God and Jesus Christ. Can't you just see those two young missionaries' reactions? To make a long story short, the missionaries taught him over a period of time. He was baptized and gave up everything he owned, including being thrown out of his house when the monks found out he was baptized into another church, to become a member of the Church. He met a bishop in Greece who helped him get a visa to come to the United States. He arrived here with only $ 7 in his pocket. He was befriended by members of the church in Virginia, where he ended up, and made himself quite wealthy with his real estate endeavors, convenience store, and I don't know what else. I wonder if Randy and Debby are familiar with him back in Virginia. He is a powerful speaker and even more powerful missionary. He alone is responsible for between 300 and 400 people coming into the Church. There were lots of "coincidences" in his story, so that's why I say there's no such thing as coincidence. He was definitely what the missionaries would call a golden contact. He is writing a book about his life, so I'm anxious to read it when it finally gets published. He was a volunteer for Mitt Romney in Michigan where he spoke to the Arab people; he said Michigan has a pretty big population of Arab-speaking people. BTW, Jamil speaks Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, English , and some other language I forgot. I know I'm just rambling, but he was so interesting.

My Chrissie Boy has doors opening to him all over the place. He and Anne will move back down to Utah Valley the end of May. He applied for a residency at UVRMC and was accepted. This is a 12 week program at UVRMC for new nurses. He also applied for a job in the regular ICU for cardiac care. He got that job too. He also applied for another job at UVRMC and is waiting for the call for the interview date and time. He will probably get that job too. Thank goodness the human resource people at the hospital told him he could wait until after this last interview to decide which position to take. He wasn't accepted into BYU-I's nursing program because, as the rejection letter said, he had too many credit hours and the university needs to make their program more available to other students. Well, that didn't sit too well with my boy, so he wrote them a letter and politely disagreed with their rejection. Today he had a call from somebody at BYU-I who told him who to call to see about getting accepted into the online nursing program for his BS, which is what he wanted to do in the first place.

Calley's getting all excited about going to college. Man, I can hardly believe that she'll be eighteen on Tuesday.

Remember Larry's shoulder surgery last January? Well, night before last he fell in the kitchen, and guess what he landed on. Yep, his surgical shoulder. He tried to catch himself, but he still jammed it up against either the door frame or the refrigerator--don't really know which one. He seems to be doing OK. It doesn't look like he tore anything up in there, thank goodness.

I have got to be the laziest person on the planet. I stayed in bed all day today except for two hours when I got up to work on the pooter. My knees have been giving me tons of trouble -- so painful. I ache all over and wonder if I might have fibromyalgia. Today I found a swollen glad in my neck and it's kind of painful too. I'm falling apart. So I just stayed in bed and rested until this evening when I got up and watched a little TV in the family room with Larry. I accomplished absolutely ZERO today. Now here it is 1:30 in the morning and I can't sleep, so I'm typing this blog. Guess I'll go read some scriptures so maybe I'll get sleepy.

Oh, my wonderful husband is at it again. He's going to the stake center early in the morning to get the font ready for three ward's baptisms. He'll be there from about 7 AM until at least noon helping out in any way he can. He's doing it for the high councilman who is assigned to this job, but who is in Europe right now. In the afternoon he is going to visit an elderly couple in a different ward, just because he enjoys being with them. Ain't my hubby something? I wonder if he's just trying to get out of doing yard work. (That's a joke, but not really cuz yard work is way below the bottom of his priority list.)