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Aman called 911 and frantically exclaimed, “Quick, quick, send an ambulance. My wife’s having a baby. Tell them to hurry!”

“Sir, please calm down a moment,” the dispatcher said. “Is this her first baby?”

“No, of course not!” the man replied. “This is her husband.”

—George Vander Weit
Troy, Mich.

During the summer of 2009, Pastor Bill Tuininga joined our church. At one of the Sunday services he stated that before he preached, he would pray for God’s leading. Lauren, our 4-year-old, didn’t hear that quite right and yelled out, “WHAT?! God’s LEAVING?!”

—Michelle Drost
Bethel CRC
Edmonton, Alberta

I look forward to November, when the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee sends out its gift catalog. I enjoy looking through it and donating to purchase different aid items each year.

The day I decided to go to town to mail my gift, it was raining. I put the envelope in my coat pocket and went to the end of the porch closest to where I had parked my car. There are no steps there, just a vertical drop of a few feet. A large puddle had formed, so I watched carefully where I jumped. That’s when I saw that the envelope had fallen into the puddle. I grabbed it immediately, tearing a small hole in it as it was all wet.

In my car I saw through the tear that the contents were dry. I seriously considered making out a new envelope—until I came up with the brilliant idea of turning the heater all the way up and placing the wet envelope over one of the vents.

By the time I got to the drop-off box behind the post office, the envelope was dry but had lots of wrinkles in it. As for the tear, I put a piece of black electrical tape over it. Again I seriously considered going home and making out a new envelope. But in the end I decided it didn’t look that bad and, since I was already at the post office, I dropped it in the box.

Two-and-a-half weeks later I got a letter from CRWRC.

Inside was a return envelope, my order form with the end of my check poking out, and a note. Deeply puzzled, I read, “Please sign your enclosed check and mail it back to us.”

—Ronald Dean Rutgers
Lynden, Wash.

An old painter named Smokey MacGregor was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got away with it for some time. But the day came when the Lutheran Church decided to restore the outside of one of its biggest buildings.

Smokey put in a bid, and because his price was so low, he got the job. So he set about erecting the scaffolding, setting up the planks, and buying the paint—and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.

Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down—washing the thinned paint off the church and knocking poor Smokey to the ground among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the useless paint.

Smokey looked up to see the church's pastor looming over him. He knew he was busted.  “Reverend,” Smokey whimpered, “Forgive me! I'm so sorry for what I did. What should I do now?”

The pastor replied, “Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more.”

—Sue Beattie
Lewiston, Mich.