WE PLAN, GOD LAUGHS

Someone has said, "Man makes his plans and God laughs." We don't always know how life is going to turn out, but God does. This is true of my friends, Darrell and Wanda. 

Wanda went to Florida after graduating from High School. She was planning to visit friends in a warmer place, but God had different plans. There she met Darrell, a Key West native, and soon they were married. He had his degree and had planned to teach Florida youth, but a decade later I met them in North Dakota where I instructed and baptized him and they became our friends and great helpers in my church.

Darrell had planned a career there as an insurance and investment counselor, but God had different plans. A decade later he attended seminary and was ordained in the Lutheran pastoral ministry.  He and Wanda assumed he'd be pastor of a church in the midwest, but God had different plans. Their first church was in the Bahamas! After that they ministered together to people with mental retardation and hearing loss, so Darrell learned to preach and teach in sign language. 

He took a call to a congregation, but again God had different plans. With his Caribbean background, Darrell spent more than a year with LCMS World Relief helping people in Haiti after their earthquake. He is now pastor in a west Texas town where there's a huge prison for Hispanic people due to be deported. There he has begun a highly successful Bible Class inside that prison. 

He wrote me last week of another incident how God changed their plans. They'd returned from a short cruise and planned to leave ship, but fog and cold weather kept them on board all day, requiring them to drive home at night by a more desolate road. Along the way they encountered a rollover accident involving a mother and four small children. In the freezing cold they stopped to help, prayed with them and called EMTs on their cell phone. 

Pastor Darrell and Wanda had planned a trip, but God had a better plan. If they had have driven their normal route home or at the normal time, they'd missed assisting the accident victims. Once again, he said, God put them at the time and place where they were needed. "Was this a coincidence?" he said. "Absolutely not!" 

Their personal life hasn't been easy. Darrell has endured a heart attack, personal struggles and now has vision problems that require Wanda to be his driver. They've always trusted the Lord for their needs, especially for his special ministries. Today he is trying to purchase Spanish Bible Class items and materials for Wanda to make the hundreds of Spanish Bible verse bookmarks they give each deportee as they leave the prison.

Darrell finished his letter, "The next time you are late for something or your plans are changed, remember that God is still in control. He knows what needs to be done and He protects His own. That precious family didn't know us or we them, but God put us together that night!"

Carol and I have decided to help Pastor Darrell and Wanda's prison ministry and we invite you to join us. We're sending our check to Trinity Lutheran Church, P.O. Box 245, Eden, TX 76837, with "Prison Ministry" written on the check memo line. 

Praise God for His good plans and His dedicated workers!