I was fast asleep.
As I ‘came to’ I distinctly heard God tell me to go to Birmingham New Street station. I tried to go back to sleep. I was tired and thought I was probably hallucinating.
The voice came again and then again.
Fortunately, I lived in Birmingham at the time, so it wasn’t that far to go on the bus. I figured if I was wrong, the worst that could happen was that I wandered around for a bit with the weirdos before catching the bus back home.
I got up before anyone else, and caught an early bus into town.
I had no idea why God was asking me to go to the station.

New Street was fairly bustling , even at 7.30am. There were a few people standing around reading papers, but no-one caught my eye. I asked God who I was meant to talk to or meet. I heard nothing. I yawned and thought I must have been mistaken.

But then, there she was. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a Nun, if you please. She was small with white hair and very black eyebrows. She was old and she had been crying. I went towards her and asked if I could help. She turned to me and spoke quietly, but desperately. The only trouble was she spoke in Spanish (or possibly Portuguese) My English is fairly good, but my Spanish is minimal. In fact I think I know approximately four words. None of those words came out of her mouth. She was speaking quickly and doing a lot of gesticulating. But I was utterly clueless as to what she was saying. I felt helpless.

I put my arm round her and asked God to help me understand what she needed. She calmed down a little and then pointed to someone’s bag. Suddenly it dawned on me. Had she lost her bag? I made ‘English woman abroad charades’ for “bag”, mouthing the word loudly, like I was trying to be understood by a deaf lip-reader. She began to nod violently.

Ok. We were getting somewhere. But now what? A tiny holy woman of South American, Portuguese or Spanish descent had put her trust in me to find her lost luggage. I decided to look for a left baggage or lost property office. I asked a few questions and soon discovered that there was one. It was shut. For another 20 minutes.

So I bought the nun (whose name I managed to glean, was Sister Anna-Maria) a cup of tea and we sat and smiled at each other awkwardly whilst I checked the time, every 14 seconds. Eventually, I spotted a man head towards the office. I almost ran to him in relief and asked if he could help. That’s when I saw it. On his lapel was a fish badge. Hooray! I breathlessly introduced myself and explained the problem. Mal was fabulous.

Sure enough, something had been handed in the previous evening. It looked like an ordinary bag with a striped handle to me. But Sister Anna-Maria started to cry and clasp her hands together when she saw it. No wonder. Inside the bag was a beautiful chalice in an ornate box, presumably from her convent. She had been charged with taking it to London for some reason (like I said, my Spanish wasn’t up to ‘I have been asked to bring a priceless golden chalice to your shores’ ) and had accidentally left it on the station the night before somehow, come back and it had gone.

I am so grateful for this adventure. It was the first time Father spoke to me in this way. I remember how precious that moment was when the three of us strangers held hands and thanked God for bringing us together at 8am on 6th March 1999. I took a picture of my new friends as a reminder so that I would recognize them in heaven and give them a hug.