Oh, How the Lord is Good!

This past weekend the Lord has shown me in 3 pretty big ways the magnitude of His blessing.

(1)For starters, this weekend I went to Des Moines, IA for the Heartland Swing Festival. I competed in two competitions. One of them was a Same Gendered Strictly (Strictly=enter as a couple) with one of my best friends, Kelsey. We did pretty well but didn't end up making finals. Praise Jesus! because it ended up being a mockery of a competition, including drunk men making fools of themselves and another two men kissing just to win. Not my, nor Kelsey's, cup of tea...so we were thankful.
But that's not even the big blessing. The other competition I entered in was the Jack and Jill (you enter as an individual and are paired with somebody random). There were 3 preliminary rounds of approximately 18 couples each. That's a lot of competition and I didn't, in the least, expect to make it to finals. When the list of finalists' names was posted, mine surprisingly was one of them. That alone felt like an accomplishment.
Well, in the final round, I got paired with a super great dancer by the name of Anthony Chen. Here's a video of him at another event. Great, huh? Definitely better than I am.
When they named the winners later that night, our names were called for first place. FIRST PLACE! And with that title, we each got $100 and passes for Lindy on the Rocks in Denver. This is the event that I paid for by working a bunch of odd jobs this past summer...and this year I get to go for free. And the money that was won basically paid for my expenses for this weekend, making this weekend almost free too. Thank you Lord and Anthony Chen.
And just so you know, that win was (in my mind) 80% Anthony, 20% me. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for the experience.

(2) When I returned to the Cities, I picked up my car (I carpooled with friends) and stopped to fill it up with gas. At the gas station, a man walked up to me, while I was pumping gas, and asked if I could spare a dollar for food. I lied to him and told him I didn't have any cash on hand. He walked away slowly while I finished pumping gas, but the Lord just kept prodding me: whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.
So, I grabbed my check card, locked my car doors, and walked over to the man. I bought that man, whose name is Kevin, some gas station food. Every time I told him he could grab more if he wanted to, the smile on his tired old face got a little bit bigger. It's sad that it works this way because it's not about me, but helping him blessed me a lot. There was joy to be found in the occasion. And I hope the Lord provides more opportunities for me to see a little bit of Jesus.

(3) My back door house key is by itself, separate from my car keys. When I arrived home, I was unloading my luggage from my car when I dropped my house key in the snow. I searched and searched and searched for it for 20 minutes. I was so frustrated, but praying to the Lord to help me have the faith that He would show me where it was. I looked some more, but to no avail. I still have the front door key, so I moved my car to the front of the house (the pathway to the front door from the backyard has been snowed in since the beginning of winter, hence moving the car to the front). I unloaded my stuff inside, but moved my car to the back again (with the snow falling outside, it's just easier to make sure the car is in the back in case of a snow emergency later). I prayed some more and looked again, but still nothing.
When I came back inside, I wrote my roommate a note to tell her about the situation. Right after that, I picked up the hanging clothes I had and the key fell right to the floor. Bam, there it was.
It would have been so easy for that key to have fallen when I was moving the clothes into the house without me knowing. It could have fallen on the street or sidewalk without me ever knowing it was there. But instead, the Lord blessed me with having to trust Him first and then providing the very thing I asked for in faith.

Oh, how the Lord is good!