Hey friends this is Heidi St. John welcome to the off-the-bench podcast

today's mailbox Monday and I'm going to spend the next little bit of time answering

listener questions and you guys send some good ones in as usual stick around I think you're always so just encouraged. I know I tell you guys this, but I feel like I need, I'm going to keep saying it, so you'll keep sending me your questions. I love the questions that you're sending in. It tells me that you're

considering what's happening in your schools, what's happening in the lives of your children. It tells me you're

getting off the bench and onto the battlefield and it makes me a hundred different kinds of happy to be able to spend this time with you and to answer your questions

and really just to connect with you on a level that I wouldn't be able to do any other way.

So thank you for sending your questions.

And I want to tell you a story today.

So I'm really excited about this because it reminds me that the little things

that we do every day are actually making a difference and when I say we I'm not just

talking about me I'm talking about you I'm talking talking about the things that you do in your everyday life that you think maybe isn't touching a life or maybe just doesn't matter at all. Maybe it's just a, you know, maybe it's a net, not all, zero on the grand scheme of things.

Well, several weeks ago, I was speaking at a conference

and a woman, a local conference, and a woman came up to me

and she said about 12 years ago I bought some big fluffy green couches from you off a

Facebook marketplace and I was like big fluffy green oh I do remember that she, I came to your house, I got the couches, I actually, you know, she, I think she said maybe I ended

up giving, just giving them to her, and she said, you know, she's gone through the couches now, and they're living in somebody else's home, but she said you gave me a copy of what would have been a brand new book at the time becoming mom-strong how to fight with all this in you for your family and your faith and she said that book

changed my life and she just started crying and she said I'd like you to meet my friends whose lives

have been changed because God used you to change my life.

And these are my friends and she introduced me to her friends.

And I'm telling you guys, I do not think that in, I don't know,

27 years now of speaking,

that I have ever been more encouraged

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