| |  While four-year-old Leah slept, the angels visited her in a dream. They told her they were taking Grandma Mowie to heaven to see Jesus. Leah's dream occurred the same night that Grandma Mowie unexpectedly died. Leah's gift gave her family comfort knowing that Mowie was now in God's care. Hopefully by sharing this story, others will also experience God's awesome love.
How My Grandma's Angels became a published book!
After Leah (only age four, Feb. 1995) told me about her awesome dream, I knew it was a special gift from God. Leah had such a peace and calmness about her that next morning after Mowie died, I knew it could only be God's love filling Leah's broken heart. She said she would miss Mowie, but she knew that Mowie had gone to heaven because the angels told her in her dream. Leah told me she wasn't afraid of the angels because she felt so much love from them.
 I asked her every question I could think of about her dream so I could write it down. Then when God blessed us a couple of months later with the beautiful needlepoint of Leah's dream, I asked Leah if she would write her story as a thank you note to Sister Busch. We put photographs with her words and saved a copy for ourselves.
 Our close friends asked for a copy of Leah's story, so during the summer between first and second grade (1998), Leah rewrote her story and drew pictures to go with it. I was so proud of the way Leah jumped right into this project. We would come up with a main idea for each picture, and then Leah would sit at the kitchen table and put the pictures from her mind onto paper. I was amazed by the specific detail of many of her drawings. Then we scanned these pages on our home computer and printed a few complete copies to give to our friends and family.
La Haye hôtels That same summer, I sent about 30 letters to publishers telling about Leah's story to see if anyone had an interest in publishing our story. We received many very kind rejection letters. I knew that if God wanted this story published, it would be in God's time, not mine.
Our pastor asked Leah if she would read her story during church in December (1998). Although speaking in front of the congregation wasn't in Leah's comfort zone, she did a wonderful job. I knew she was speaking clearly and loudly enough when I saw people drying their eyes. And just in case they couldn't understand Leah during church, we had our homemade computer copies available after church.
At the suggestion of my husband's aunt, we submitted a copy of My Grandma's Angels to Angels on Earth Magazine - a subsidiary of Guideposts. They liked Leah's story and included a portion of it in their May/June 1999 issue.
After printing, collating and binding over 800 copies of My Grandma's Angels (it took me a whole day just to make 20 copies from start to finish!), I began to feel that we should share our story with more than just the people we knew!
At the beginning of 2000, I started the search for a place where we could self-publish My Grandma's Angels. I now had a clear vision of how I wanted the finished book to look which is why I decided to check into self-publishing. I didn't want anyone changing our story in any way. I am not a perfectionist at many things, but this project was very special to me and close to my heart. I already had so much time, energy, and emotion invested in this story and I wanted to see this book through to the finish. I found a Christian self-publishing company, WinePress Publishing. My hope and prayer was (and is) that My Grandma's Angels would be a book that will help others draw nearer to God.
 Leah's pictures were terrific, but they lacked backgrounds. So Leah got out her watercolor paint set and came up with the most beautiful combination of colors. When I put her drawings on top of the water colored pages, her pictures seemed to come to life!
 luxury hotels HannoverI was able to spend two months working on adding the background to Leah's pictures because I was sick during this time and didn't have the strength or energy to do anything else. As I look back on this now, I know the purpose and reason I was so sick was so I would sit at the computer all day to put the finishing touches on My Grandma's Angels. This is the first of many events that helped me realize that I was following God's will. God was with us all the way during the production of My Grandma's Angels.
As I was writing my part of the story, many mornings I would wake up with a new thought about what I should include. I would open my Bible to look for a verse to coincide with my thoughts and there it would be - the perfect comforting words from God.
At the very end of the editing process, I thought of another paragraph to add, but it was very difficult for me to get my thoughts clearly written down. I wrote and rewrote this paragraph stretching my deadline by almost two weeks. My husband and the publishers never understood what I was trying to say, so I just kept trying. I was almost ready to forget the whole paragraph when I finally asked God for help. (I don't know why I waited so long to ask the expert!) Then in less than five minutes, I typed out the most wonderful paragraph - concise, straight to the point and so easy to understand! (It's the one about the topside of the counted cross-stitch.)
 When the book was printed the first time, the white part of the angel bodies were moved over to the right. They called to ask if I would like to have these 10,000 copies for a very reduced price or if they should destroy them. Since I was hoping to give many books away to charities and hospitals, I knew it wasn't a mistake that these extra 10,000 were printed -- they are gifts from God. If you have one of these special copies, you now know God had these extra books made with you in mind. These special copies will not be sold, only given away.
Another remarkable thing happened about a month later when I was told the shipping information for the books. Besides telling me when to expect the books to arrive from Hong Kong, this shipping information also told me the name of the ship bringing the book to the USA. My eyes just about popped out of my head when I saw that the name of the ship was my parent's last name, my maiden name and Leah's middle name!!! That made me realize even more that we were doing what God wanted us to do.
God was ever present during the publishing process of My Grandma's Angels - 10,000 extra special books, the ship with our family name, helping me write my part of the story, in my illness where I only had the energy to sit at the computer until I was finished then I recovered - and many other fingerprints that could have only come from our gracious and loving God. Many of the events in My Grandma's Angels are the first time I encountered "God Moments" because I never really took the time to experience, listen to, or look for evidence of God in my life. I have shared many of these "God Moments" with you on our web site because I know these special things that happened are one of God's ways of encouraging to us to strengthen our faith and draw nearer to Him. We need to share these moments with each other as evidence of a living God. When we take the time to be calm and listen to God, He guides us to follow His will for our lives and in return He fills our lives with so many blessings and God incidents.
Please consider sharing your "God Moments" to encourage other Christians. Our testimonies can help strengthen each other's faith, but we need to be willing to reveal these private and precious stories. Also, by sharing our "God Moments," we can plant the seed of faith in the minds and hearts of our friends and family who do not have Christian roots. A strong faith can help us get through the stress, anxiety and trauma of the difficult times. It's so much better to give God all our troubles and to fill our thoughts with the good we can do for each other.
When we fill our thoughts and actions with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (fruit of the Spirit - Galatians 5:22 & 23), we are more aware that God is living each and every day with us and in us! God can even turn bad events in our lives into good purposes! "In all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28
 At the end of Leah's pages, I decided to include Romans 8:28 with one of her beautiful watercolor backgrounds that I didn't use with her drawings. I found this verse when I was doing some research at the church where my father's parents grew up. Although all the records were in German, a friend translated for us and we found out that Romans 8:28 was Leah's great-grandmother's confirmation verse. Although I never knew my grandmother, I feel a close bond with her because of this verse. That's why I included the pages at the end of My Grandma's Angels where grandparents can write in their favorite Bible verse or saying and space to include pictures. Although grandchildren may not realize the importance of the verses when they are young, they may someday come to understand how precious those words are to them.
 When I was growing up, at the end of each church service, our minister would say the Bible verse found in Numbers 6:24-27. I never really thought much about it hearing this verse week after week. As I was writing my part of My Grandma's Angels, God lead me to this verse as a great comfort from my childhood roots - which is why I knew I needed to include it at the end of our book. My faith through these events in My Grandma's Angels has helped to strengthen my faith, but I now realize that my parents, family and my church family were a very important part of those Christian roots that have been growing and deepening my whole life. Many people planted the seeds of faith that now are growing and blooming and I want to thank them for their faithfulness, time and energy. I pray that we will continue this cycle and plant seeds of faith into our children as well as all the children in our lives.
After much prayer, in July 2001, we ordered thousands more books to be printed not knowing what God had in mind for them. After the tragedies of September 11th, we received a call from the Billy Graham Prayer Center that they would like to try to give a copy of My Grandma's Angels to each child who lost a loved one on that tragic day. Our new shipment of books arrived in the early fall - at just the perfect time when they were needed. We found a trucking company who was willing to try to get the books into the Billy Graham Prayer Center at ground zero. To our surprise, not only were the thousands of books delivered in only two days, but when they arrived, we were blessed to find out that the shipping cost had already been paid. We are very thankful for our "trucking angels". Our family prayed that the books would help the children and the families who received them and that they would grow closer to Jesus and to let his love fill the empty hole in their hearts.
Recently, we received an e-mail (read it in Comments and testimony section of this web-site) from a pilot with a major US airline who visited the VIP viewing area at the World Trade Center and saw My Grandma's Angels posted on the memorial wall.
 It is our continuing prayer that God will continue to use us and My Grandma's Angels to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, His love, peace, comfort and promise of eternal life in heaven available to everyone and anyone.
We hope and pray that My Grandma's Angelsluxury hotels in Marbella is a book that will help people understand that God loves them, God has a purpose and plan for their lives, and God sent His son, Jesus, to earth to die for our sins so that we can spend eternity in Heaven -- all we have to do is believe!
"For God so loved the world He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him, will not perish, but have eternal life."
John 3:16 | | |
