“Sometimes I just feel so ditzy,” Sharon said. “I try to keep a planner of everything. As the Children’s Ministry Director, I keep track of meetings that might need child care. I contact people ahead of time to find out who can serve. For some meetings, I call the mothers I think might come to ask if they need child care this time. I write everything down in the planner.”
“I still mess up.”
“Last week there was a Bible study meeting for a group of ladies. I thought I knew who would be there. I thought of a couple mothers who might bring their children. When one sent me a text to cancel childcare, I checked with the others to see if they needed child care. Each one had other plans for their children, so I called the child care workers to say we would not need a nursery this time.”
“The day of the event, I learned that more mothers had decided to come and bring their children! I needed child care workers! I found out one teenager had shown up. Apparently I had mentioned this date a month ago, and she wrote it in her planner. I had not confirmed or canceled her for the schedule, so she showed up. She is CPR certified, so that was fine, but I knew I needed a second childcare worker.”
“I told Eli, 14, to hurry up and get ready. We all went to church, where I saw one of the workers I thought I had told she didn’t need to come. I was almost completely sure I had texted to tell her we did not need child care. Of course, I was happy to see her, though!’
Since she was there, Eli would not be as needed, but since she was there, we now had more than two teachers in the childcare room. One teacher at a time could take a break, step out of the classroom, and the children would still have plenty of helpers.
Eli left to go to the men’s washroom. Good thing he did. The ceiling leaked.
He found me, “Hey, there is water coming down from the ceiling in the men’s room.”
“I went to check it out,” Sharon said. “The water was coming down fast. The sprinkler system had a leak.”
“I went to find the church secretary to see if she knew who to contact. She did. We have a contract with a company that installed them, to come back and fix the problem.
Amazingly, that company was just right around the corner! They were able to come out to check out the leak.
They came and fixed it quickly.
This was all on Thursday. Usually no one is at the church on Friday and no one would have known about the leak for two days. Because Eli was there, he went into the men’s room, saw the leak, and it was repaired. He was there because I thought I had canceled all the child care workers and we needed someone to stay with the children.
Just thinking about the events, Sharon shook her head in wonder. “because I thought we did not need the workers, I canceled the child care. Because one of the workers did not get the message, I had enough workers. Because I thought I did not have enough workers, Eli came to help supervise the children. Because he was in the building, he saw the leak that otherwise would have gone unnoticed, and we would have had water damage.
Because the leak was found early, it was fixed and the church did not have any water damage. My carefully worked plans failed. God had other plans. Even when I’m a ditz, all things work together for the good.