Tornado miracles

Week of May 26
Looking at the complete devastation left by the Tornado which obliterated 17 miles of Moore
Oklahoma May 21, the mayor said, "it is a wonder anybody survived this."

Twenty four didn't, including nine children, but 22,000 who live and work
in the area leveled are still with us.

 Teachers were laying on top of third graders while their school is demolished. Day care workers held carts over preschoolers, and fireman dug with their hands to find survivors covered with four feet of debris. These are all miraculous moments,

One account we found particularly touching was a young  pregnant woman. She said the nurses sedated her when the storm approached the hospital and stayed with her throughout the ordeal. They saved me and my baby she said. The hospital is no more.

She was taken to another facility and the baby was successfully delivered. The nurses dubbed the eight pound boy, "Twister." But the grateful mother had the final say appropriately naming her new son, Emanuel, which means God with us.

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Some Prayers take time

Week of May 19

 

Bill and Cindy are a wonderful Christian couple. For years Bill has taught Latin in the Manchester Public School System. Cindy was a youth counselor when she first met Bill.  They are married, have six children and are running a retreat center in Hebron, Connecticut called Mary's Field.

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The Pfeiffers have a modest home for themselves and their children. Despite having a large family they opened their home to unwed pregnant girls who had nowhere to go and wanted to deliver their unborn babies. The family agreed on the need to find a separate place for Mary's Field and expand its reach to anyone seeking deeper spiritual meaning.

 

Bill said the whole family discussed what an ideal center would look like. Each of the children had things they wanted. The younger children wanted an indoor pool to swim in year round and not have to worry about leaves or cold weather. The youngest boy wanted "a neat robot thing that cleans the pool." One teenager wanted a tennis court and another a jute box. Bill wished for a room large enough to house a small chapel and Cindy visualized a spacious kitchen suitable for volunteers to prepare meals for groups. 

 

 Bill, an ordained priest, lead the family in prayer and presented these requests to the Lord. Bill then suggested to the children that they give up something they like, to show their seriousness in making these prayer requests. The children decide to give up watching television.

 

Almost a year goes  by. No television. No retreat center. “Then came God's answer,” Bill said. He receives a call from a Mary’s Field board member who reports a local bank had foreclosed on an estate. A developer had built the mansion as his personal residence during the real estate boom of the early 1980’s.The housing bubble burst, the developer had committed suicide and the bank was left with the property. It had remained vacant for more than a year and the bank “is anxious to unload this white elephant.”

 

The Pfeiffer family went to take a look. A long secluded driveway leads into the property that includes 23 acres, mostly wooded. A large two-story house sits on a hill overlooking woods and a pond. In front of the house there is a paved area for parking and a lawn with a flagpole. Adjacent to the house is a hard surface tennis court and down the hill is a carriage house large enough to serve as a chapel.

 

 The sprawling contemporary house has a rustic interior with four bedrooms, three baths, and a

spacious dining room off of a large kitchen that is suitable for cooking for groups.

 

There is an indoor pool and yes, it is equipped with a self-cleaning robot. One thing the Pfeiffers hadn't requested was a party room with a built in wet bar. However, in one corner of this room stands a shiny jute box.

 

"And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive."  (Matthew 21:22)

 

Bill Pfeiffer

Hebron Connecticut

A Vote for Salvation?

Week of May 13, 2013

There is a local election coming up Tuesday this week and I am reminded of an analogy
a thoughtful minister gave me once about salvation being like an election. He put it this way:

"Think of your Salvation being an election. There are three eligible voters. God is always going to vote Yes for your Salvation. Satan is going to vote no. You have the deciding vote."

Have you voted? Guess what the outcome is if you don't vote? It is your choice.

Angel on a bridge?

Week of May 5

 

 “Occasionally I see reports of happenings that can not be humanly explained-of visitors unexpectedly appearing to assist in times of crisis, or warning of impending danger. These can only be explained as the Intervention of God’s angels.”

      Bill Graham, Hope For Each Day

 

When I was 19 years old I lived in Tracy, California, and had been out with some friends in Stockton, about 20 miles away.  I was driving home alone about 2 am old Highway 50. The highway splits into two high narrow bridges over the San Joaquin River, one for north bound and one for south bound traffic. The bridges are steep so that you can’t see the other side until you get to the top. 

 

There was no traffic on the road at that hour and I was traveling the speed limit. I was in the left hand lane going up the south-bound bridge when, for some unexplained reason, I steered into the right hand lane. A moment later I was in the middle of the bridge when out of nowhere, a car came speeding the wrong way in the lane I had just left.

If I hadn’t changed lanes there would have been a head on collision in the middle of that high and narrow bridge. There was nowhere to go except over the edge into the river below.  I know that I would not have survived the crash or the river.

 

Decades later I still shiver at the thought of what could have happened that night.  There was no reason for me to change lanes. I was saved by an angel that night, I’m absolutely sure. 

 

“For he shall give his angels charge over you,

to keep you in all your ways.” Psalm 91:11

 

Mary (Kiser) Bartlein

Tracy, Ca.