By Melanie Martinsen

I am amazed at how God works.

I helped with collecting items for our mission trip to Romania from the start. I saw all the items we collected go from our church foyer to my office, then to the gym for sorting, and lastly into bags to load onto the airplane to Romania. From the beginning, I saw a particular doll that didn’t seem to belong with any of the other items we categorized and bagged. I kept seeing this doll go from a box to a pile of items and then from bag to bag. At one point I even thought of taking it out and putting it away to use for something else or for some child in Houston. But I left it and saw it finally get zipped up at the top of a number of items in a full bag and forgot about it.

As we traveled from location to location in Romania, we each were able to fit shoes on children and see the smiles on their faces as they said, “Bun!” (Good!) One morning my team and I were at a group home with happy, beautiful children. Most of them were older elementary age to early adolescent age children, except one little girl named Kate.

We were having a successful time fitting children into shoes and hearing “Bun.” We came to Kate and realized we had absolutely no shoes close to her size. We hoped that as the van came back from the other group homes with extra shoes that there would be a pair her size – but no such luck. We would have to return the next day to deliver the correct size. As we were heading back into the house to tell her, our translator was transferring all of the humanitarian aid items out of our bags to give to the home. Sitting on top of all of the toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant was the doll we packed back in Houston. Bingo!

We explained to Kate that we didn’t have a pair of shoes for her at that time, but we did have a doll. The house mother said she had no dolls. At first Kate was not sure that it was hers to keep. But when the house mother explained to her she could keep it, she was happy.

Then we saw Kate smile.

God always sees the big picture. We think we have enough shoes for every child; we think we are prepared. But God makes up for our inadequacies. He saw little Kate and provided for her by using us and a doll from Houston. I will never forget Kate and her new doll. She will help me to remember how God always provides.

Melanie Martinsen traveled with Buckner and Jersey Village Baptist Church to Romania from April 14-24, 2008.
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Buckner is now accepting story submissions for Buckner eNews Now and the Buckner Web site from people who have participated on mission trips or local volunteering.

Send your story in a Microsoft Word document to news@buckner.org. Include your name, city and state in the subject line along with the title of your submissions. Stories should be no longer than 1200 words. (ex. Your Perspective – John Doe, Houston, TX)

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