May 4th, 2003 The 2nd Sunday after Easter, (In this year, this day was also called Orthodox Easter) I received a series of signs of the number 2. It wasn't until about 8:30 in the evening that I even realized that they were happening.

At this time I went to the local grocery store to purchase some milk and get a newspaper. I also bought another item like cheese or something of that nature. I went to the milk section and I remember looking at the coolers of milk. On my left side was the milk from cows that was not treated with the hormone rbST. On the right side was the milk from cows treated with it. I thought, "I will pay the extra few pennies for the Milk without the hormone drug". I know what hormones do to teenagers and women, and I laughed to myself inside. I reached into the cooler and grabbed a gallon of 1% milk. I always drink 1% milk as it has less fat. We have been drinking 1% milk in my family for at least 10 years now or more. I used to drink whole milk when I was a younger child, then my Mom switched to drinking 2% milk. I later tried 1% milk and thought it was not that bad so I stuck with always buying that kind. I have tried Skim milk, but it just tastes too watered down for me. 1% milk is about right. I heard there might be � percent milk coming out. I would try that if they did, but I have yet to see such a thing in stores. What percent is Skim Milk anyway? O percent fat?

I grabbed the gallon of milk out of the cooler and then the cheese (I think it was cheese) and proceeded to the counter to pay for my items. I told the cashier that I was going to grab a newspaper on my way out the door from the stack of them that were there. So she rang up the items, I paid for them and left. I was carrying my bag of groceries in my left hand and with my right hand I reached into the stack of newspapers and grabbed one. I squeezed it really tight as I did not want to lose any of the sales ad inserts that were placed inside. You can't lose the sales ads. It was the main reason I was buying a paper in the first place. I put the bag of groceries and the paper in the back seat of my truck and I headed home. I arrived home and opened the back door to my truck. I grabbed the newspaper first. I then noticed that there were 2 newspapers. I thought, "Uh oh, I stole a newspaper". Even accidentally, the fact remained that somehow I grabbed 2 newspapers and did not pay for the extra one which was now in my possession. I was bummed out and thought, "What if the cashier had seen me grab the newspapers and flip them onto my shoulder as I walked out of the store?" They would surely think that I was trying to pull a fast one by stealing one.

I went into my house and set the grocery bag down on the kitchen counter. I then went into the bedroom where my wife was watching TV. I told her about grabbing the extra newspaper by accident and that I felt bad about it. I didn't want anyone to think that I would steal a newspaper. My wife then asked me how many newspapers were left at the store, to which I replied,"About 40 or so, I think." She said, "Well they will never sell all of them at this time of the night, and they would be picking up the extras soon and dropping off the Monday papers". I agreed with her, but I still felt bad. I wanted to go back to the store and bring back the paper. That would be embarrassing, but at least my conscience would be clear.

Just then my son yelled in from the kitchen, "Dad, why did you buy 2% milk?" I said to him, "I didn't buy 2% milk, I bought 1% milk, and I always buy 1% milk". My son said, "Well there is a gallon of 2% milk in this bag, so unless you are losing your marbles, how would you explain this?" I went to witness this myself in the kitchen and sure enough, there was a gallon of 2% milk. I just sat there and thought, how odd. Now right there and then I had a thought come over me and I had to think of how odd it was for me to go to the store and have these 2 things happen to me totally by mistake. I had to think that I could see 1 thing happening by mistake, but for 2 things to happen like this seemed just a bit too odd. My wife then said, "And this is the 2nd Sunday in a row that something odd has happened to you." I said, "Yeah, you're right!" So then I said to my son, "What have we done all day today?" Earlier that day we went to the No Tap Bowling tournament in Cloquet MN. I was on a team with my friend Mike W. from the West Side of St. Paul, Jeff, Dick and Roche. Jeff is Wendy's husband and Dick is Wendy's father-in-law. I work with Wendy at the prison. Roche is on my local Bowling team. It was the 2nd year that I bowled in this Tournament. It was also my friend Mike W's 2nd year that he bowled in this tournament. I bowled 4 games in that tournament. Nothing special, I didn't even score high enough to place in the prize money. My son said that was true but surprisingly pointed out to me that I had bowled 2 - 180 something games and 2- 230 something games. I said, "WOW; I guess you are right Mike. What else did we do today?" He said to me then, "We came home and played some box hockey. We played 2 games". I then said, "And I won them both" and I razzed him a bit for it laughingly. "Well yeah, I guess we did, but I always whoop on you when we play that game, so that is nothing new" - LOL! My son looked at me with a slight tone of "Getting a little cocky now, aren't we dad?" "OK, ok" I said, "What did we do next?" He said "You took a nap Dad, but the nap was exactly 2 hours long". "Really" I questioned, "How do you know it was exactly 2 hours?" He said, "Because I looked at the clock and I remember looking at it again when Mom came home with dinner." At this point things are starting to seem like an episode of the Twilight Zone and we all just looked at each other and thought what next? I sat there and thought about things for a minute. "When we ate dinner" I said to my wife and son, "Mom brought home Arby's roast beef sandwiches. They were on sale; 5 for 5 dollars. She bought 2 of those specials and came home with 10 sandwiches. And do you know what? I ate only 2 of them and used 2 packets of Arby's sauce!" We all laughed. Usually I would normally eat 3 or 4 of those sandwiches, but today, I only ate 2. There we all were again thinking, WOW, this is really odd. I was feeling giddy like a kid in the candy store with birthday money from my grandparents and no one around to tell me what I could or couldn't buy. I remember when I was a kid, and with a quarter, I could go to the corner store and buy a whole bag of penny candy. You could get a wide variety of candy. I would fill up the bag and go find my friends and we would all share in a candy feast! That was fun, and I was thinking how fun was this story going to be to share with my friends.

It was about at this point that I really started doing some soul searching and I just new it right then and there that I was in the middle of something very supernatural. I just knew it was my sign from God that I had asked for. I asked God for a fun sign, and not a scary one, but a sign that could not be discounted as a mere random occurrence. I was really starting to feel an overwhelming sense of joy. I thought about it some more and my son was staring at me. I then said,"This has to be a sign! What if I didn't pick up on it? Would I have known? Would I have figured this out?" So then I got an idea from out of no where in my head to check my pockets. (I now know that when these thoughts come into me like this that it is for a reason and that it is God's way of communicating with me through the Holy Spirit.) So I went with the flow and said out loud to my son and my wife, "What is in my pockets right now?" I just knew there would be another 2 of something. They looked at me eagerly waiting to see what I would find; I was even acting like an excited child on Christmas morning! I reached into my left pocket and found nothing at all. I reached into my right pocket (Of course it had to be the 2nd pocket in which I picked) and pulled out 2 paper coupons. They were coupons in which the sponsors of the bowling tournament, a local casino near there, had given out to each of the bowlers. Each bowler was to receive 1 coupon. The coupon was to redeem a coupon booklet at the casino to get free quarters and match play coupons at the gaming table. The reason that I had 2 of them was that Roche, who I bowled with earlier that day, did not want his. He asked me if I wanted it and I said sure. Not knowing if I would even go, but I sometimes did in the past, so I took it and put it in my pocket. Usually I have change, keys, breath mints and possibly a plethora of other items. Not now, just 2 coupons. So as we all laughed again at how weird this was getting, I was thinking "How fun is this! Is it over? Is there more?" (I never even used the coupons.)

My son went into the kitchen and while walking away he said, "Dad, you're freaking out!" and laughed again. "Don't you think this is neat?" I asked him. �He just acted like this was weird is all. My wife was in the bedroom where she was watching TV. I told her how I was feeling about all of this saying that I think it is definitely a sign. She was thinking, "Yeah right, OK, whatever." So I then asked her to quickly grab the remote control to the TV and switch the channel to channel 2, right now. I said it with enthusiasm as I new I was going to see something else that was going to definitely have something to do with a 2. She picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV and pushed the button. I eagerly looked at the TV and saw nothing, but then I did notice a number 1 pop up in the upper corner of the screen. I then said to my wife, "Honey, channel 2, not 1." She had made a mistake and in her haste of changing the channel she accidentally pressed the number 1. Seeing as there is no programming on channel 1, the channel did not switch and the television system waited for another number to be entered. She quickly pointed the remote control at the TV again and mistakenly hit another number 1, thus making the channel switch to channel 11. Now if she had waited probably � second longer, the first 1 she had pressed would have went away as when you press numbers on the remote control, they are on a timer, and if you don't press another number within that given amount of time, it will just go away. But seeing as how she was quick to press the buttons in succession, the so called "accident" of pressing the wrong number of 1 happened twice and consecutively.

What my wife and I then saw on the TV was an English comedy program for which I do not know the name of, but I will describe it to you in the best detail that I can remember. There were a bunch of actors on this stage that had the appearance of a laboratory. The actors were all wearing lab coats and safety glasses and safety gloves and they were singing and dancing. There were 2 main actors in the very front and in the center of the screen. These 2 actors in particular stood out by each of them wearing 1 very brightly colored glove on one of their hands rather than the standard rubber gloves that all the other actors were wearing. The 2 main actors in front were wearing 1 regular colored glove and 1 brightly colored glove each. I believe 1 was female and 1 was a male but I am not positive. As they stood side by side, the actor on the left was wearing a bright glove on their left hand and the actor on the right was wearing a bright colored glove on their right hand. The 2 brightly colored gloves were next to each other but on different people. One actor's glove was bright green, and the other actor's glove was bright orange. We saw all of the actors dancing in unison and all of the actors were lifting their hands up and pushing one hand at a time towards the screen and then back again. Then while the one arm was pulling the hand back, the other arm was pushing the other hand toward the screen. So you have alternating hands, left, right, left, right and so on. Their hands made the sign of a 2 or like when you make the peace sign with your pointer and middle finger. All of the actors were doing this and the sign of 2 came thrusting at my wife and me, over and over and over. And in the very middle of the screen the 2 predominantly brightly colored gloves were smack dab in the middle of the screen and they were centered in on them. The 2 brightly colored gloves moving in unison, one on one actor's hand the other glove on the other actors hand and moving in perfect unison together coming right at the screen. I didn't hear 1 word that they were singing, my wife and I just let out a loud, "WOAH!" If that wasn't the clearest sign of a 2 that I had been witness to that day, I don't know of one that could have been clearer to me at that precise moment. Praise God!

Ok, so now what do I do? "What does this mean?" I am thinking, my mind is racing for answers, because I did not know at the time what this exactly meant. It is clearly a sign I thought. But a sign like this that consisted of an entire days worth of coincidences, which I now call "small miracles" had to mean something big I thought. It had to. I have never in all my life heard of such a thing happening. I then thought back and went out to the kitchen where I brought one of the newspapers. I thought of the first thing that I had noticed out of all the 2's that came that day and the first thing that triggered it for me and turned the light on was the 2 newspapers. So I thought maybe there is something in the newspaper that I had to see or read. My son and I started paging through the newspaper and I looked at the major headlines and nothing stuck out. I looked at the 2nd section and nothing stood out. I looked at the second page of every section and nothing jumped out at me. Hmmm I thought again. I then looked at the classified section and read the want ads and job postings. I saw 1 job that I could qualify for and emailed the company. Dead end there too. What did it mean? Why was God using the number 2?