Patch, match and dispatch...

God's loudspeaker was a lady in a patchwork shop. As the poet Cowper puts it, God certainly does work in mysterious ways. And it was these mysterious ways that brought Graham and Karen to Alpha and into a relationship with God.

It was during a conversation about God, with this lady in the patchwork shop, that Karen was convicted that her life was being controlled by sin. Karen was devastated and sought comfort in a Christian friend. Her friend agreed that Karen's life was under the bondage of sin and suggested that Karen pray the salvation prayer; she also invited her to the Alpha course. Karen prayed the prayer, but was much more reluctant about the Alpha course! Karen was also insistent that her friend should tell nobody about her prayer, not even Karen's husband Graham. Her friend advised Karen that she just pray about it.

Karen took that advice and prayed as she drove home, but still felt insistent that she wouldn't tell her husband either about her prayer or about Alpha. Yet the moment she saw her husband she blurted out in excitement what she was thinking and what she had prayed and how she wanted to go to Alpha. Her husband's reaction surprised her. He said that Alpha was something he had been wanting to go to as well, for quite a long time!

But they both thought that the Alpha course was only one session. When they found out there were actually fifteen videos they felt they didn't have the time to go, and they tried all means possible to not go to Alpha! Yet they did attend the first session, and in watching the introductory video they found that Nicky's message was exciting, true, and very relevant to them and so they kept coming back for more, every week.

Karen says, "I was just hungry for whatever was coming each week. God had been calling and I was coming." She says that this was a culmination of what she had been looking for, for years.

While for Karen it was a gnawing hunger week after week, for her husband Graham it was more like the suspense of a television serial. He came back week after week to see the "next thrilling episode." God worked through both the spiritual hunger of Karen and the thrilling suspense that drew Graham to come.

Graham says that on the weekend away, "I stepped forward and had my eyes closed and this light was like somebody was shining a torch in my eyes. I opened my eyes to look, but nobody was standing there with a torch." Graham says that this was the point at which he accepted God was with him.

On the weekend away, Karen responded by crying. She says, "Kleenex tissue sales would have gone past budget a long way". Karen cried for weeks after the weekend, and realised that God had filled the "incredibly empty space" that she had in her life, a space she had tried unsuccessfully to fill, with husbands, houses, shopping, jobs, and changing cities.

She had been searching for something to fill this empty space, but her search came to an end that Holy Spirit weekend. She comments, "I just feel life has got meaning and being born again has real meaning."

What God started with the patchwork, and united with a matching of Graham and Karen's minds to attend the Alpha course, is continuing as God dispatches Graham and Karen to his service. They are involved in their church activities at Hillsborough Baptist and are now running their first Alpha course. As Karen says, "It's like a new start!"