Downingtown, Pa. business owner Joan Ressel said she and her husband's breakfast and brunch restaurant, Coppertown, was on the verge of having to close its doors.
The restaurant, which provides drive-thru and walk-up food services saw a major decrease in business over the last winter season, leaving the couple swimming in overdue bills that Ressel said they had no means to pay.
The owner was just about ready to throw in the towel when one of her customers showed up at the drive-thru with a check for $10,000.
"I was racking my brain, overly frustrated, ready to throw in the towel. Then he showed up at the window on Saturday with a beautiful card about god's grace," she said.
"When he gave us the card and we saw that it had money in it, my husband got tears in his eyes. I still get choked up when I think about it. This is literally going to like save our business. "
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
Ressel said she had had previous discussions with the customer, but was totally taken aback by the large donation.
The customer, who wishes to remain anonymous, says God told him that he was supposed to give the money to the couple.
"I was in the car praying and a vision came upon me of this amount of money, and I heard that I was supposed to deliver a message and deliver the amount of money to them," the man said.
The anonymous donor said he initially wrestled with the decision to give the money to the couple, so he prayed about it and discussed the vision with his wife.
"I just said to her, the Lord told me that we're supposed to give Joan a message and an amount of money, and my wife, of course asked how much, and I said I'm not gonna tell you how much, you tell me the amount. And she turned around and said $10,000, the exact amount," he said. "That confirmed for me that this was of God and not my doing."
Since she first opened her business in 2008, Ressel has been through a number of hardships. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, and says she went through six surgeries and 30 radiation treatments before the cancer went into remission.
Just weeks after she'd received her final radiation treatment, Ressel says she and her husband were in a car accident that left her with a broken thumb and a badly bruised shoulder.
Ressel says she took the donation as a message from God that she had to overcome her struggles and continue running her business.
"For me it was so overwhelming because it felt like God had seen me in my struggles and was saying don’t give up, keep going," she said.
"I am still messed up over this because you hear about people doing things like that for someone they know, but for someone who is not a family member or friend to do something like that is just amazing."
Ressel said she was floored by the customer's obedience to God, but the man says he doesn't want to receive any praise for what he did.
"This is not of me, this is directly from God and I'm not gonna accept any praise or glory from this at all. I don't want it," he said.
Ressel said she and her husband initially tried to give the money back to the man, but he refused. His only request of the owners was that they pay the favor forward to someone else.
"I asked if we could give it back to him when we start doing well again and he said it was a gift from God, and that he wanted us to give it to somebody else," she said. "If we make it, I definitely plan to do just that."
