How great are his signs!—Daniel 4:3 (KJV)

My husband, David, and I were in Zimbabwe, trying to help a few hungry street kids. Yet, each morning when approaching our hotel’s taxi queue, we always ended up in the same beat-up car.

A year later, with our daughter Keri joining us, there was that same taxi. When the driver, Paddington, saw what we were trying to do, he wholeheartedly joined in. He had a deep love for his desperate country and longed to help the hordes of AIDS orphans. So, somehow, in the blink of an eye, we found ourselves partnering with this amazing man. By now, thanks primarily to Guideposts readers called to serve African children, we were compiling a list of donors who wanted to help.

As we rode through the dusty African bush in an un-air-conditioned taxi, God was weaving a beautiful tapestry of open hearts and pitiful needs. He was taking us to a rural community, where AIDS-broken families lived in hunger in mud huts. There, He visioned a farm where His hungry children were fed, taught new skills, and given animals to enhance their lives. He saw a school being built, and a library, and a home where countless orphans were taken in as family. And Paddington, who started by helping us check on the children and distribute food, eventually moved into the orphanage with his family and became a surrogate father to the children there.

If we had known what lofty plans He had for us, we would have run for the hills. Yet today, as we visit this amazing spot where children gladly walk miles to school and grandmothers are assured that there will always be food cooking over their fires, we are humbled.

To think, it all began with a taxi that He put in the right place at the right time.