The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first
ministry to reopen a church in urban Brooklyn, arrived in early October.
The church was very run down and needed work. They set a goal to have
everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.

They were almost finished working when a 2-day rainstorm hit. The
pastor's heart sunk when he went to the church after the storm and saw that
the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 6 x 8 feet to
fall off the front wall of the sanctuary.

The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else
to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home. On the way he
noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity
so he stopped in.

One of the items was a beautiful, hand-made, ivory colored, crocheted
tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a cross-embroidered right
in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front
wall. He bought it and headed back to the church. By this time it had
started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was
trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in
the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and
paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc. to put
up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how
beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area.

Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face
was like a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "Where did you get that
tablecloth?"

The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner
to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These
were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years
before, in Austria.

The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just
gotten the tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her
husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was
forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. She
was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth, but she made the pastor
keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home; that was
the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was
only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was
almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the
service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said
that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the
neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor
wondered why he wasn't leaving. The man asked him where he got the
tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife
had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could
there be two tablecloths so much alike?

He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee
for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and
put in a concentration camp. He never saw his wife or his home again for all
the 35 years in between.

The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little
ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor
had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three
flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw
the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.

True Story-submitted by Pastor Rob Reid