Joan Ressel : Customer Gives Struggling Pa. Restaurant Owners a $10,000 Tip

Downingtown, Pa. business proprietor Joan Ressel said she and her husband’s breakfast and brunch restaurant, Coppertown, was near needing to close its doors.

The restaurant, which supplies drive-thru and walk-up food services saw a major decrease in business during the last winter season, leaving the pair swimming in overdue bills that Ressel said they’d no way to pay.

The owner was just about ready to throw in the towel when one of her customers showed up in the drive-thru with a look for $10,000.

“When he gave us the credit card and we saw it had profit it, my hubby got tears in the eyes. I still get choked up after i consider it. This is literally going to like save our business. ”

Ressel said she had had previous discussions using the customer, but was totally taken aback by the large donation.

The customer, who wants to remain anonymous, says God told him that he was designed to give the money towards the couple.

“I had been in a car praying along with a vision discovered me of the amount of money, and that i heard that I was supposed to deliver a message and deliver the amount of money to them,” the person said.

The anonymous donor said he initially wrestled with the decision to give the money to the couple, so he prayed about this and discussed the vision together with his wife.

“I simply said to her, god told me that we’re designed to give Joan a note as well as an amount of money, and my spouse, of course asked how much, and I said I’m not gonna let you know just how much, you tell me the amount. And she or he turned around and said $10,000, the precise amount,” he said. “That confirmed for me this was of God and not my doing.”

Since she first opened her business in 2008, Ressel continues to be through a number of hardships. She was identified as having cancer this year, and says she experienced six surgeries and 30 radiation treatments before the cancer entered remission.

Just weeks after she’d received her final chemo, Ressel says she and her husband were in a car accident that left her having a broken thumb along with a badly bruised shoulder.

Ressel says she took the donation as a message from God that they had to overcome her struggles and continue running her business.

“For me it was so overwhelming because it felt like God had seen me within my struggles and was saying don’t give up, carry on,” she said.

“I’m still messed up over this because you learn about people doing such things as that for somebody they are fully aware, but for somebody that isn’t a family member or friend to behave like that is just amazing.”

Ressel said she was floored by the customer’s obedience to God, however the man says he doesn’t want to receive any praise for which he did.

“This isn’t of me, this really is from God and I’m not gonna accept any praise or glory out of this whatsoever. I don’t want it,” he explained.
Ressel said she and her husband initially tried to provide the money-back towards the man, but he refused. His only request from the owners was they pay the favor forward to another person.

“I asked if we could send it back to him whenever we start succeeding again and he said hello was a gift from God, and the man wanted us allow it to someone else,” she said. “When we make it, I definitely expect to do exactly that.”

Agencies/Canadajournal