Invisible Miracles

You may remember that last week we were having trouble with our stove.  Here is the miraculous culmination to that exciting tale (I know you were waiting with bated breath).

So, the new piece we ordered online showed up last Thursday.  Josh was sick that day, so I called in Bryce and we installed the new piece together (no, I am not incompetent, I just thought it would be good for Bryce to help).  We got it all hooked up, plugged it in and the heating elements still wouldn't work.  The clock was fine, the timer was fine, but anything that should have gotten hot didn't. 

I called my dad (that's what I do when I am frustrated and Josh isn't available).  He looked online s'more and said some people mentioned that their power cord came loose and by just tightening a few loose screws things worked fine. 

I figured I could handle that.  I took off the back panel and found this super helpful picture of what the connections should look like so that I could be sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

This is what I found inside that panel. 

The power cord and connections had completely melted and were totally severed.  As soon as I saw this I felt intense gratitude to my Father in Heaven.  It would have been so easy for this problem to cause a fire and I could have lost my home or a member of my family.  It could have been tragic. 

Thankfully, God sent me a miracle that I didn't even know I needed and kept this problem from flaring into something devastating. 

After some research we found that the power cord was not tightly connected causing it to short over and over again which, over time, caused the problem you see in that nasty picture. 

My dad came over and helped us replace all these parts (every kid got involved...I love that my dad is so patient with them and lets them be part of things).  We tightened everything down, FOR REAL this time, and fired up the stove which works like a charm now.

Sometimes I feel extremely grateful for answers to prayers that I didn't even know I needed to send heavenward. 

(But you can bet I will occasionally be removing that back panel just be sure I don't have to count on another miracle).