Years ago we lived In Azusa,California so I could attend Azusa Pacific University aka APU. During this time we had three daughters. About the same time our wonderful JoAnna or as we called her Jo was born. She was born On July 16 which meant she had the same day of the month and month birthday as my wonderful Grandmother Annie Daum .
The other three girls had names that started with the “J” sound. They are Gina, Janelle and Jill so JoAnna had to have her name begin with the same sound hence Jo. The Anna part of her name was so it could be similar to Grandma Annie Daum.
Every night I played with the girls before they went to bed at about nine. Then my wife and I spent an hour together. That meant I began doing my homework about 10:00 PM. I know the study system worked well as I got pretty good grades.
I worked In the APU cafeteria 28 hours a week. I hit on the 28 hours because when I worked more than 28 I ended up with the same income as when I worked 35 hours because when I worked more hours the outside income from friends and family fell off. I ended with the 28 workweek. I felt God wanted me to work 28 hours and if I did that She/He would take it from there.
One month we had extra expenses so we did not have the rent payment. I didn’t know what to do so I decided to do something to make sure I did my part. The only thing I could think of to do was to wash the car.
A few hours later our friend Tom came by. He told us that he felt God wanted him to help us financially. He gave us a gift of a healthy amount. We gratefully thanked him as he left our home.
After he left my wife and I prayed to thank God. We prayed “Thank you God for the gift you provided us but we still don’t have enough to pay the rent”.
Soon after we prayed Tom knocked on the door a second time. He said”God told me that I had not given you folks enough money. He handed us six twenty dollar bills. Now we could pay the rent and we had some left over too.
When I started working in the APU cafeteria a woman who was the Cafeteria Hostess told me not to worry about money. She said ” Not to stress Everything was going to be fine for us financially”.
She advised us in the words of a favorite saying of hers that had seen her through a tough money time in her life. “Where the finger of God Points the hand of God provides”. My family lived that out.
Sometimes the head cook at APU gave us left over food from the kitchen. Each quarter the Board Of Directors at APU had a meeting at the University. The Board had their own luxury dining room. One time the cooks served the Board prime rib. After the board meeting ended there was a generous portion of prime rib left over. The head cook gave me leftover meat.
I took it home and very carefully warmed the meat up as per the Head Cook’s instruction. The whole family had a regular banquet celebration that night. At that time my oldest girl , My sweet Gina, was about eight years old. She was thoroughly enjoying the meat. I could see on her face how much she was savoring it. Finally she said “Daddy, what is this new and different meat”, It obviously was not hamburger or canned tuna in a casserole.
George Caywood 