AN ANSWERED PRAYER

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Our family had just moved to Florence, Italy, when my five-year-old daughter, Abigail, complained of a toothache. In the States, this would have been a simple phone call and trip to our dentist. But here we didn’t speak the language, know of a dentist, or even know where in the city to find one. In addition, we didn’t know anyone we could turn to for help.

I found a phone book in one of the drawers in our apartment and looked up the word dentista.

I saw the name Leonardo Brunelleschi. I dialed the number.

“Pronto.”

“Do you speak English?” I asked.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then he said, “I speak the English.”

“My daughter has a toothache. Can you see her today?”

“Today? Yes. You come at two o’clock in afternoon. Ciao.”

I wrote down the dentist’s name and address, which was near a piazza, and that afternoon, with my daughter in pain, drove through the labyrinth of Florence’s Etruscan-designed road system. I soon discovered that what I thought was the dentist’s name was really the name of the piazza.

For nearly forty minutes, Abigail and I walked up and down the street looking for anything that resembled a dentist’s office. There was nothing.

Finally, we stepped off the street into an alley. “I’m going to pray,” I told Abigail. I said, “God, my little girl is in pain. I can’t find this dentist. Please help us.”

Simple prayer. Simple faith. Then we began walking the street again. After another fifteen minutes of searching we were nowhere closer. Finally I conceded defeat. As we walked back to our car I noticed a woman in the distance. She was more than a block away, standing on the sidewalk outside a building staring at me. To my surprise, she shouted, “Reeeeechard!”

How was this possible? I was in a strange country and literally knew no one. Not to mention that the woman was so far away. I probably wouldn’t have recognized my own wife at that distance. Then I wondered if she was really calling to me, or if it was one of those experiences when someone waves at you and you wave back before realizing the person was waving at someone behind you. I turned around but there was no one around us. When I looked back, her gaze remained locked on me.

“Reeeechard,” she shouted again. “Is it you?”

Taking Abigail’s hand, I walked toward the woman. As we neared, she said, “Yes, it is you, Richard. You have finally come to Italy.”

I still had no idea who she was. As if anticipating my question, she pointed to herself and said, “It’s me, Claudia.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “How do I know you?”

“Do you not remember? I showed you an apartment.” She was one of a half dozen apartment managers Keri and I had met six months earlier as we looked for a place to live. I had met her only once and briefly at that. “What are you doing in this place?” she asked.

“We’re looking for a dentist.”

“What is his name?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was Leonardo Brunelleschi.”

“That is the piazza name,” she said.

“I know that now,” I said. I showed her the paper I had written the address on.

“Hmm,” she said. “I know this place. He is my dentist.” She looked up. “I will show you to him.”

We walked at least fifty yards off the road down a maze of alleys and streets. The sign for the dentist’s office was only three inches long—all but invisible.

We thanked Claudia, and Abigail and I went upstairs to the dentist. I never saw Claudia again.

You could call it a coincidence, but that seems a little unlikely. Or a lot unlikely. I believe there is power in prayer. Sometimes there is divine intervention.