[Perna]

Yesterday I got to go to the dentist and get my top front teeth replaced; lucky me :-) I was early to the appointment and the dentist is in a new shopping center and the space next to him now has a cleaners. I have a hand-woven, antique, textile and I'm looking to get it cleaned so I went in and asked about whether they could do it and the young woman gave the "right" answer; she'd have to look at it and if they couldn't they'd send it to an "expert" and, yes, they knew a textile expert.

The young woman was very friendly and we started talking of other subjects, she mentioned she had been studying for a couse; she had a Bible open and another book on top of that. I asked what the course was and it was related to Western Religions; Roman/Greek and the "background" to the Bible and Europe's Christianity, that sort of thing. I got the impression from how she accented "Western" that it wasn't her native belief system but I didn't want to pry into her personal info. But we started talking about language and the difficulty she is having writing a 7 page paper. I topped her :-) as I'm taking a course now too and have a 15 page paper to write. But we both agreed the language is difficult for her; I told her about my classmate last semester from Burma and how I'd helped her. I finally asked where this young woman was from and she's South Korean. But we talked about all sorts of interesting little tidbits; her biggest problem is Western "names" when she's reading because they're so long. Korean names are usually maybe 3 letters, "Kim" and the like. She says she has trouble with English and French names because of their length.

I finally dragged myself away and was late for my dentist appointment :-) I'd stood talking a good half hour. I'm going back soon and take my regular cleaning, hemming, textiles :-) with me. Perhaps we can talk more about her course and mine and I can learn more about her and her beliefs. I just found it interesting the chance encounters we have and love thinking about whether they are "chance" at all.

[(JD)]

Exactly. I try very hard to take something from each encounter, believing that God put me there for a reason, either for myself or for the other. But ya gotta love the interaction!

I was just rethinking, before coming into the forum, about Romans 8:28 For we know all things work together for good...

in the Greek the base word is the word we get "synergy" from... so, to me, there is no "chance" encounters. So even your posting this is trying to tell me something...God's synergy and grand plan of things.

[SeptemberMorn]

That happens on the Internet, too, doesn't it, Sky?

After a rough start, you and I have grown quite close. I don't think that was any accident, either!