Angels are Around Angel #1

It is not easy to live abroad as a foreigner where everything is new and often surprising. It is quite of an adventure, yet terrifying and challenging at the same time. It takes a while to adjust to so many different things such as culture, habit, rules, language, weather, environment, and people. Despite of fear whenever I thought of things that might come my way, as Christian, however, I believe that God will always help me. This is the time for me to really putting my believe into practice. I keep His promise, "I will never leave you nor forsake you!" I am learning how to live fully depend on Him and I amazed every time I found He helped me in His unique ways. It's so true that He remains faithful all the time. His love never fails. Somehow this thought came across my mind "angels are around" and every time I thought of it, I smiled and whispered,"Thank You, Lord! You are awesome!" 

Introducing angel no#1 - Angelo

After more than three weeks of waiting for Italian customs to release our personal goods, after all hassles of calling and submitting extra documents. Finally our personal effects of 23 boxes arrived in our house. 

As we live on 2nd floor apartment, we were informed by the moving / courier service who handled our goods at destination, that to bring the goods to 2nd floor was not include in the 'door to door' service we paid, thus it would be an extra cost. "To door" was only meant to deliver "in front of the first door at destination" and that would be the 1st floor. We thought that it was such an irritating and silly argument, and decided to just let them drop all boxes on 1st floor then bring them all up ourselves.For that reason, my husband have called and arranged delivery timing with the courier service for the goods to be delivered after 4PM (after his working hours). Again, this timing arrangement didn't seem to work, as they showed up at 3PM while I was home alone. Nevertheless, I had to let them come in and I thought "oh my goodness now I have to lift up each box up one by one by myself". But that was my thought, in reality it happened this way :

The goods delivered by BRT Courier Services and two couriers came to our house that 3 o'clock Friday afternoon. One guy was older than another one, and both were polite. The younger one unload the boxes from the van, and the older guy grabbed and brought the 1st box all the way up to the 2nd floor! I was amazed and started to worry....."do they know that they are not suppose to bring the goods up?," I thought. What happened next was, the older guy who looked less friendly, switched place with the younger one. So the older one got on the van and began to unload, and the younger one grabbed and brought the rest of boxes up. 

After 4 boxes were on 2nd floor I stood near the door of the van to help them grabbing a box, and the older guy said something in Italian....he was trying to explain to me that their services were excluding bringing all goods up to 2nd floor!! While the older guy was talking to me, the younger guy kept bringing boxes up. So I tapped him on his shoulder and tried to stop him from going up, I said to him , "You can just leave the rest of boxes here behind the 1st floor door, my husband will bring them up later. To my surprise, the younger said something back to the older guy, then slightly smiled and said to me in Italian which somehow I understood as "no worry, I will bring all boxes up". The older guy then silently unload all the boxes out of the van, and  the younger one brought all 22 boxes up all the way to the 2nd floor until his face and body completely wet from sweat! 

It was a hot summer day in Florence and I couldn't thank God more when I saw this young guy completely sweaty after helping me out. I called my husband to quickly shared what happened and we agreed to give the younger guy some "tips" as our gratitude and appreciation for his hard work. I prepared two glasses of cold juice for them to fresh-up. When he put the last box, he wiped his sweaty forehead, reached his pocket, and handed me the receipt to sign. I gave him the tip and offered a glass to him. He zipped the juice instantly. I said,"Grazie", and asked for his name. "Mi chiamo Angelo", he said and smiled. When I heard this name, the thought came across my mind..."angels are all around, Ossi". So I handed him another glass, I said,"this is for your friend downstairs", he grabbed the glass, went down the stairs with it and called out for his colleague "Franco!!"; I followed him down, and the older guy whose name was Franco, came in and received the glass, he also drank the juice instantly and said to me in English,"Thank you". He returned the glass to me, and they both left....when they were leaving I said again,"Grazie! Thank you for your help. God bless you!"

So that was an angel without wings God sent to help me that very day, and his name was Angelo. I love The Lord!! He is my Heavenly Father and He knows how to come up with great help in His perfect timing. Amen.