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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 20, 1981
PAGE 11
The following month I again paid a tenth of my income to God and we
experienced another month of incredible sales. My father again com
mented: "What an extraordinary couple of months!" He was astounded-
he couldn't understand it.
Nevertheless,
I
realized that God was
intervening as He promised in His Word.
In August--four months after
I
began tithing--my three brothers came
to town on their vacation. They noticed the changes at the store
immediately, commenting: "You' re selling more than before,
11
"You have
more customers," and so forth.
I
continued to tithe and saw clearly how God intervened in all our
affairs. In November of 1975 I was baptized and by then I owned the
store. My father had sold it to me in January of that year, granting
me easy repayment terms.
The first time
I
had to pay a third tithe it seemed impossible--! felt
overwhelmed by the many payments
I
had to make for stocks, taxes, etc.
I
got down on my knees and
I
prayed to God with all my might, imploring
Him to help me set apart the three tithes that year--I really wanted to
do it. God helped me in such an incredible way that not only my wife
and I, but also my relatives were amazed! It was the greatest year we
had ever witnessed!
My store sells footwear and gift items. During that third tithe year I
sold an incredible number of pairs of hiking boots, which is the cost
liest footwear item I stock. Something else that was unbelievable-
which had never happened before, either to me or to my father in his
many years as a storekeeper--! sold more crockery and china that third
tithe year than I had in several of the previous years put together!
(Tableware is the most expensive item
I
have for sale and the one on
which the greatest profit is made.) Both my wife and
I
were so amazed
we just could not figure out what was happening before our very eyes,
because we had never before sold so much tableware--it was something
completely out of the ordinary. When
I
finished paying my third tithe
I
also stopped selling china--sales of tableware went way down and
from then on they sold as they had always sold, very few and far
between.
There were other third tithe blessings: The first year
I
faithfully
paid my third tithe my father gave me a considerable amount of money
from a lottery prize he had won. During my second third tithe year,
I
received another sizeable sum from an inheritance.
With regard to the Sabbath
I
could also mention many things, but
I
will
just mention one. I live in a small town of some 4,000 people. When I
first started to keep the Sabbath there were three stores (including
mine) which sold footwear and everyone thought
I
would lose all my
customers for closing on the busiest sales day of the week. Well, one
of the shoe stores closed down about two years ago and the other one is
about to follow suit and we--the ones everybody believed would fail
calamitously--are doing better than ever, with more and more customers
all the time.
We have seen very clearly that God truly blesses those who trust in Him
and put His precepts into practice.
G • E • ( Spain)