A friend of mine recently relayed this story about her husband’s experience while stateside (they are currently ‘stationed’ in Europe for his job) – it was too good to keep to myself – the names have been changed (to Bill and Bob… what else? haha) to protect the anonymous! So here it is, as told by “Bill’s” wife:

While Bill was in Kansas for training, he spent the weekend in Nebraska visiting with his sponsor. While he was there, he went up to the penitentiary and spoke at their AA meeting.  He told the story about being deployed to Bosnia several years ago. He was coming up on his 10 year anniversary and was bummed because there were no meetings on base, and he had recently moved to Ohio so he hadn’t been there long enough to have a home group who might send him a coin.  He went to the chaplain who sent him off to Mental Health to talk to someone. 

He walked into the tent and there sat Bob. Bill and Bob had originally met when both were stationed in Korea – they met through service work. So he and Bob started having meetings. Bill told Bob his tale of woe about the token. Bob said: “Bill, I just celebrated 11 years and my group sent me my token…so I have a 10-year coin I can give you. [this is the kind of thing that I lovingly refer to as “God showing off” – Beth]

After he finished his talk, one of the inmates came up and asked if he’s still in touch with Bob. Bill said no and the inmate said, “That’s too bad, people like that are people we need in our lives.”

Recognizing this as a not-so-subtle hint from God, when Bill got back to Kansas to complete his training, he looked Bob up on Facebook. It turns out Bob is a civilian working at Ft Leavenworth KS (where Bill is at school) and his office is 500 feet from where Bill sits each day for class. They got in touch, met, went to meetings and got to hang out for a couple of nights. Best of all, he now gets to stay in touch with someone who made a difference…GOD SHOWS OFF BIG!!!

[Editor’s note – if you have stories like this I would love to hear them and (with your permission) share them – please send them to yaygodblog@yahoo.com]