An Answer to Prayer

I love the way God sometimes answers prayers just to delight us.

We had lost our camera (or maybe had it stolen) in France. Everywhere we have been since, we were sure we would find somewhere to pick up another one, but time did just now allow for it. Now we are in Beijing and were sure we would be able to buy one somewhere here near the airport. But everyone assured us that the nearest place to buy a camera was an hour's journey away into town, and we are only here for a brief stop on our way to Mongolia. It seemed a tragedy not to have a camera to take pictures in Mongolia. We had just about resigned ourselves to continuing to use our phones for pictures.

We were wondering the streets around our hotel–little grocery stores, window makers and so on–in order to get a little exercise, and I was saying to the Lord that I would love it if He could find a way for us to buy a camera.

We went into a couple of telephone stores, but none of them sold cameras. Finally we found a third telephone store, and, like the others, it did not sell cameras. But in our mime to ask about cameras, someone went into the back of the shop and produced her own camera to make sure that was what we were looking for. Then she offered to sell it to us. Tony speaks a smattering of Mandarin, and he was able to work out what they were offering.

So now we are the proud owners of a second hand camera–and all because God delights to answer our prayers.