337 Strikes Again

The above photo is what Aaron did to himself in the car while waiting for the following story to unfold...

Many who know me have heard me say that 337 is my "God number." I didn't choose it, but it's just a number that has appeared in many strange ways and situations over the past 15 years or so. I've begun to notice it as God's way of marking something and saying, "Hey, pay attention to this..." or "Hey, watch what I'm going to do here..." or "Hey, pray about this...". (Okay, maybe God doesn't say "hey" that much, but you get my point.) You know, like the time our motor home broke down--yet again--and I went to get a burger while Peter sulked outside and my order number was #337. I just knew God was in the middle of our RV trauma and doing something about it. Sure enough, we went outside and fired the motor home right up and sailed away. No problemo.

Well today was a good one. For months after we moved here I combed over Craigslist ads daily looking for furniture deals. Once we purchased the furniture we currently have I got tired of it and stopped searching. Okay, so we ran out of money. That just to say, I have not been on Craigslist in a long time. Today I got the random urge to sell something on Craigslist. Once my listing was posted, I decided to take a minute and do a couple of searches. Bunk beds. Floor gym. Area rug. Bingo!

A listing came up for a 5' x 8' red wool area rug in Hawi (basically my town) for $100. I noticed the phone number which ended in 8337. Dingdingdingdingding. My curiosity had me calling the number immediately. Sonora was her name. She seemed very mellow and was open to me coming over right away to look at her rug. Peter jumped in the car with me and we drove 5 minutes down the road to Sonora's house. We introduced ourselves and she noticed Alyma and we talked kid talk for a couple of minutes. I found out that she has SEVEN children, two of which are adopted. They moved here two days ago from Seattle and don't know anyone in the area. She's my age. Her house is stinkin' cute and looks like she's lived there forever. I wonder how it is that she is more unpacked and organized in her house she's been in for 2 days with 7 children than I am after 7 months and half the children.

She shows us her rug and I like it. She comments that she has another one. And then another. We decide to buy two of them. Yeah!!!! The longer we talk, the lower her price gets and we end up with two rugs for $200. She asks me if we happen to know a guy named Oliver. We know Olivier (pronounced oh-live-ee-ay, French), a friend of ours who lives on our street. Turns out they have mutual friends. I suspect she is a Christian, so I ask her and she is. We find out that we have mutual friends who went to Vanguard University, our alma mater. She used to live in Costa Mesa. So did we. Suddenly we are all very excited at our "small world" experience and that our rug purchase led us to meet some new friends!

We have planned to go to Kapaa Beach Park for a BBQ with them and Olivier and his family soon. Sonora is excited that they have so quickly been able to meet other young Christian families in the area. Now you can't tell me that this was a "coincidence." This has 337 written all over it! ;) And I just thought of something else. Only yesterday I found out that Olivier's name is spelled like it is. I never knew it was spelled so similarly to Oliver. Had I not learned this yesterday, I never would have thought about our friends, Mia & Olivier, when Sonora said "Oliver."

Anyway, it's just so fun. I love how God works things together like this. We're looking forward to getting to know our new friends and OH! We stopped by Mia and Olivier's house on our way home to let them know about our encounter with Sonora. Olivier, who happens to own a carpet cleaning business, saw that we had two rugs rolled up in our truck and offered to clean them for us for free! And it's a good thing because one of them was FULL of dust like you would not believe. He cleaned both rugs very well and sanitized them for us. All ready for baby now! And I PRAY they cut down on the echo factor in our house!

The End