We had just traveled all day over the mountain pass that lead into the village of Kumily. As dusk came, we prepared to head northeast across India to the city of Chennai. Our bus driver gathered our group of four, signaling that it was time to leave.

I took in the scene – the elephants, now finished from a long hot day of porting tourists around snacked on some nearby banana trees. Buses, scooters, bikes and rickshaws whined through the streets amongst throngs of Indians, people going in every direction. It was a typical scene, and there was nothing out of the ordinary, at least not as far as India is concerned.

As our bus driver shifted gears and began to pull through the crowds and out of town, he turned to us excited shouting “Sajit! Emmanuel!”.

We were more than surprised to see our friend Sajit George, a man we had met two days earlier in the trip, some 200 kilometers away, on the other side of the mountain pass, standing on the bus, excitedly waving to us.

Even in this country of billions of people, and even though the odds of meeting the same person twice are pretty rare, it would have been easy to write this meeting off as a mere coincidence. We didn’t, however, because it was unique. We had been praying for the entire day for God to show us where we could help, and we knew this was an answer to our prayer.

When Sajit came onto our bus, he was quite excited. He kept saying “Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord”.

You see, Sajit had just dropped a man at the train station. We never met the man, but we received an excited email from him some days later.

This man, as it turned out, his friend, had left to go in search of money for the small orphanage in Kumily where he cared for some 12 orphaned children. He had been without any money for over 6 months, and this was his final attempt to find some food and money for the large group of children he had left his wife to care for.

We had a nurse, a photographer and quite a fair amount of money after all, and we certainly wanted to make good use of our time and resources.

So, we toured the small 3-room orphanage and we were greeted by throngs of eager hands who were very excited to see us, and we just happened to have 43,000 rs ($1000) with us and we gladly gave it to the woman so that she could care for the children.

But perhaps the greatest miracle of this chance encounter was the one-month old baby that we met. This baby had been left, abandoned on the steps of this orphanage some weeks ago. The man and his wife had of course taken it in. When we inquired about its name, the woman explained that they had been waiting to name it.

They asked us for a name, and we came up with Anna Rachel, and we blessed it that very moment.

I guess the point of this story is that miracles do happen. God provides for His children.

If we had not stopped to do a little shopping and take in that south Indian jungle village, we would have never run into Sajit again. And without, him we would have never known that this group of children was waiting for us. We would have never known about the dire situation this place was in.

You too can be the instrument of God’s grace. For just $250 per month you can provide all the food, clothing and supplies that little baby Anna Rachel and her 12 brothers and sisters need.