Saturday, April 21, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Sylvia's Fire
Week of April 15
The house seemed quieter than usual. Michael, my seventeen year old, had just left for the store to return some soda cans and my mother, who lives with us, was away visiting my sister.
It was “Maddy” and I relaxing in the living room in the glow of the candlelight. “Maddy,” our miniature Schnauzer, was sprawled on the rug where he usually is when I’m in the room. I had no clue how this tranquil evening was about to change.
It was about nine on a work night so I decided to take my shower and get ready for bed.I normally take long showers but on this night I cut it short. I don’t know why but it is a good thing I did. As soon as I turned off the shower I heard the smoke alarms screaming and the dog scratching frantically at the bathroom door. I put on a pair of slacks, grabbed a towel and without thinking flung open the bathroom door. A thick wall of black smoke rushed in and I instinctively gasped—mistake. I choked, fell backward s and fainted.
I don’t know what happened in the next minute or so. My first recollection is I’m standing outside, still wrapped in a towel staring at my house that is completely engulfed in flames. Maddy is with me barking frantically but I have no idea how either of us escaped that overpowering smoke. I rushed to my neighbor’s house and Marcel took one look at the inferno behind me and called 911.
Michael had just left the store when he heard the sirens of the fire trucks. He pulled his car over to let the fire engines pass and as is his habit he raised his hand and offered a little prayer for those in distress. Little did he know that he was praying for his mother and his own house?
When the fireman arrived it seemed half the town was right behind them. The fire fighters did everything they could but the house was too far-gone. I never saw anything burn so quickly. Like many New England homes built in the 19th century the walls had been stuffed with newspapers and hay to provide insulation. Our old colonial went up like a tinderbox. All we could do was stand helplessly and watch our home burn.
A school friend of Mike’s pointed out an eerie sight. Framed in the window of an upstairs bedroom was the velvet portrait of Jesus hanging on the wall over Michael’s bed and illuminated by the flickering flames below.
We learned latter that the fire was started probably when the dog knocked over a candle on a table by the window that fell igniting a phone book left on the ottoman. The window curtain caught on fire and the flames literally raced through the walls.
The next day, after spending a short night at my friend’s house, Michael and I returned to the ruins. There was only one wall standing. We found only two things not completely destroyed by the fire. One was a blanket my mother had crocheted although it reeked of smoke. The other was the framed portrait of Jesus that was still hanging on the one remaining wall.
When we took the portrait down there was no evidence of the fire. It didn’t even have a smoky smell to it. How do you explain that?
Sylvia Jarvis
Sturbridge, Massachusetts
The house seemed quieter than usual. Michael, my seventeen year old, had just left for the store to return some soda cans and my mother, who lives with us, was away visiting my sister.
It was “Maddy” and I relaxing in the living room in the glow of the candlelight. “Maddy,” our miniature Schnauzer, was sprawled on the rug where he usually is when I’m in the room. I had no clue how this tranquil evening was about to change.
It was about nine on a work night so I decided to take my shower and get ready for bed.I normally take long showers but on this night I cut it short. I don’t know why but it is a good thing I did. As soon as I turned off the shower I heard the smoke alarms screaming and the dog scratching frantically at the bathroom door. I put on a pair of slacks, grabbed a towel and without thinking flung open the bathroom door. A thick wall of black smoke rushed in and I instinctively gasped—mistake. I choked, fell backward s and fainted.
I don’t know what happened in the next minute or so. My first recollection is I’m standing outside, still wrapped in a towel staring at my house that is completely engulfed in flames. Maddy is with me barking frantically but I have no idea how either of us escaped that overpowering smoke. I rushed to my neighbor’s house and Marcel took one look at the inferno behind me and called 911.
Michael had just left the store when he heard the sirens of the fire trucks. He pulled his car over to let the fire engines pass and as is his habit he raised his hand and offered a little prayer for those in distress. Little did he know that he was praying for his mother and his own house?
When the fireman arrived it seemed half the town was right behind them. The fire fighters did everything they could but the house was too far-gone. I never saw anything burn so quickly. Like many New England homes built in the 19th century the walls had been stuffed with newspapers and hay to provide insulation. Our old colonial went up like a tinderbox. All we could do was stand helplessly and watch our home burn.
A school friend of Mike’s pointed out an eerie sight. Framed in the window of an upstairs bedroom was the velvet portrait of Jesus hanging on the wall over Michael’s bed and illuminated by the flickering flames below.
We learned latter that the fire was started probably when the dog knocked over a candle on a table by the window that fell igniting a phone book left on the ottoman. The window curtain caught on fire and the flames literally raced through the walls.
The next day, after spending a short night at my friend’s house, Michael and I returned to the ruins. There was only one wall standing. We found only two things not completely destroyed by the fire. One was a blanket my mother had crocheted although it reeked of smoke. The other was the framed portrait of Jesus that was still hanging on the one remaining wall.
When we took the portrait down there was no evidence of the fire. It didn’t even have a smoky smell to it. How do you explain that?
Sylvia Jarvis
Sturbridge, Massachusetts
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Sherry's Angel
Week of April 8
On a Monday at Noon on my lunch hour, I had an appointment to see a doctor at the hospital. I was bleeding and worried. All alone and trying to be strong, I ventured to the hospital and before I entered I picked up my bible that I always carry in the car and read a scripture.
Upon walking to the hospital I heard God say to me,"Go speak to that man, He is an Angel."
I looked up and saw a man sitting in a wheelchair. His arm was propped up in a brace, and his leg was emaciated but stabilized with a series of halos around it. A I approached him.
His kind eyes looked into my soul, and they took me backwards as he really saw into me. I said hello and he replied hello. I asked if he would walk again and he said yes. Then I asked if he knew that JESUS could heal him. He enthusiastically said YES as if letting me know that I understood and was good to point that out. So I said my name is Sherry while reaching out to shake his hand, to which he paused and shook my hand and said, "I'm Angel." I said really? Yes he said.
Then I went upstairs to my doctor and learned all would be OK. When I was walking out I noticed Angel was still there. I went back and let him know that God told me to talk to him, and that he was an Angel. All he said was, "oh," yet never denied it. Then curiosity got me and I asked how this (his injuries) happened, to which he responded, "an accident." Well I said nice to meet you and God bless you Angel.
The footnote to this story is years later I was meeting with the Hospital Administrator on business and told him the story. He said it was peculiar, as the entrance where he sat was an outpatient entrance, and they never let anyone sit there for long. He had been there for over a half hour.
Sherry Sargent
Batavia,Ohio
On a Monday at Noon on my lunch hour, I had an appointment to see a doctor at the hospital. I was bleeding and worried. All alone and trying to be strong, I ventured to the hospital and before I entered I picked up my bible that I always carry in the car and read a scripture.
Upon walking to the hospital I heard God say to me,"Go speak to that man, He is an Angel."
I looked up and saw a man sitting in a wheelchair. His arm was propped up in a brace, and his leg was emaciated but stabilized with a series of halos around it. A I approached him.
His kind eyes looked into my soul, and they took me backwards as he really saw into me. I said hello and he replied hello. I asked if he would walk again and he said yes. Then I asked if he knew that JESUS could heal him. He enthusiastically said YES as if letting me know that I understood and was good to point that out. So I said my name is Sherry while reaching out to shake his hand, to which he paused and shook my hand and said, "I'm Angel." I said really? Yes he said.
Then I went upstairs to my doctor and learned all would be OK. When I was walking out I noticed Angel was still there. I went back and let him know that God told me to talk to him, and that he was an Angel. All he said was, "oh," yet never denied it. Then curiosity got me and I asked how this (his injuries) happened, to which he responded, "an accident." Well I said nice to meet you and God bless you Angel.
The footnote to this story is years later I was meeting with the Hospital Administrator on business and told him the story. He said it was peculiar, as the entrance where he sat was an outpatient entrance, and they never let anyone sit there for long. He had been there for over a half hour.
Sherry Sargent
Batavia,Ohio
Monday, April 2, 2012
Jack's Easter Miracle
Week of April 2
Good Friday Jack was working out at the gym, as he often did. Without warning he collapsed on a weight machine and slid to the floor. A cardiac nurse happened to be working out nearby. She normally would not have been at the gym at that hour but a schedule change at work allowed her to be a the gym. She had the presence to remove vomit from Jack’s mouth which cleared his air passage. Jack, unconscious but breathing on his own, was rushed to a nearby hospital.
In the emergency room Jack remained unconscious, a couple of times the doctors lost a pulse. He remained in a coma. The doctor told his wife that a cat scan showed no activity…if he regained consciousness he probably would be a vegetable. Jack’s youngest daughter, Colleen, a high school student, told her mom not to believe the doctor.
“Our God is bigger than that,” she said. Later after the rest of the family arrived, Colleen found her way to the Chapel. She was alone. She prayed for God’s healing power. She said she clearly heard a voice in her head say, “I will restore those (brain) cells Sunday to glorify my son’s resurrection.”
When she reported this revelation to her family she was met with skepticism, heads shaking in disbelief, and eyes rolling. The next day Jack was still in a
comma and on life support. Twice Colleen, in talking to her dad, got such a strong reaction on the monitoring machine that the nurses came in the room. The second time Colleen was asked to leave the hospital room. She insisted her dad was going to be ok. “You don’t know my God or my dad,” she told the nurses as she left.
The next day, Easter morning, there was a banging at her bedroom door. It was her little brother reporting that “Dad woke up.”
An excited Colleen, while driving to the hospital stopped at every convenience store she passed to exclaim “Behold the Lamb of God, my dad is healed.” She arrived at the hospital to find her dad sitting up and being his old feisty self.
When Colleen returned home that day and turned on her favorite Christian station the first thing she heard was “Behold the Lamb of God.”
Jack Reilly
Tucson, Arizona (as told by his daughter)
Good Friday Jack was working out at the gym, as he often did. Without warning he collapsed on a weight machine and slid to the floor. A cardiac nurse happened to be working out nearby. She normally would not have been at the gym at that hour but a schedule change at work allowed her to be a the gym. She had the presence to remove vomit from Jack’s mouth which cleared his air passage. Jack, unconscious but breathing on his own, was rushed to a nearby hospital.
In the emergency room Jack remained unconscious, a couple of times the doctors lost a pulse. He remained in a coma. The doctor told his wife that a cat scan showed no activity…if he regained consciousness he probably would be a vegetable. Jack’s youngest daughter, Colleen, a high school student, told her mom not to believe the doctor.
“Our God is bigger than that,” she said. Later after the rest of the family arrived, Colleen found her way to the Chapel. She was alone. She prayed for God’s healing power. She said she clearly heard a voice in her head say, “I will restore those (brain) cells Sunday to glorify my son’s resurrection.”
When she reported this revelation to her family she was met with skepticism, heads shaking in disbelief, and eyes rolling. The next day Jack was still in a
comma and on life support. Twice Colleen, in talking to her dad, got such a strong reaction on the monitoring machine that the nurses came in the room. The second time Colleen was asked to leave the hospital room. She insisted her dad was going to be ok. “You don’t know my God or my dad,” she told the nurses as she left.
The next day, Easter morning, there was a banging at her bedroom door. It was her little brother reporting that “Dad woke up.”
An excited Colleen, while driving to the hospital stopped at every convenience store she passed to exclaim “Behold the Lamb of God, my dad is healed.” She arrived at the hospital to find her dad sitting up and being his old feisty self.
When Colleen returned home that day and turned on her favorite Christian station the first thing she heard was “Behold the Lamb of God.”
Jack Reilly
Tucson, Arizona (as told by his daughter)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Lost Wallet
Week of March 25
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
Thursday, March 22, 2012
John' Miracle
Week of March 18
On the island of Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.
I did and he thought it was a sinus infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double. I decided if I didn’t feel better in the morning I would go to the emergency room.
In the morning, still feeling lousy, I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was not.
While my lungs sounded clear x-rays revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the lungs.
I do not remember of lot of the initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called. They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were even there.
My body weight went from 167 to 132. Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.
I was literally a rag doll and could only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.
I remember thinking. How am I going to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally depressed.
The bed I was in was a special physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard. I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed. I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse help…nurse help!”
Then a strange thing happened. It was as if my spirit had left my body. I was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks. A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it would be over,end of struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.
Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”
A voice said, “Can I help you?”
After getting me help I found out that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish, Montana who asked that the Chaplain to look me up.
From that moment on I never had depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatice progress physically. Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.
I still could not mover a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.
I was moved from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are closed to being released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse on that floor.
One day the doctors looked at me and my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my support system.
Flying Nurses International flew with me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mt.
It wasn’t until I was back in Montana that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal business, had been meeting and praying for me daily throughout my ordeal.
You see, the doctors were right, I am a living miracle. And I was right, I could not come back on my own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my friends and that Chaplain to help me back.
John Woods
Kauai, Hawaii
On the island of Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.
I did and he thought it was a sinus infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double. I decided if I didn’t feel better in the morning I would go to the emergency room.
In the morning, still feeling lousy, I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was not.
While my lungs sounded clear x-rays revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the lungs.
I do not remember of lot of the initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called. They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were even there.
My body weight went from 167 to 132. Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.
I was literally a rag doll and could only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.
I remember thinking. How am I going to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally depressed.
The bed I was in was a special physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard. I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed. I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse help…nurse help!”
Then a strange thing happened. It was as if my spirit had left my body. I was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks. A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it would be over,end of struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.
Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”
A voice said, “Can I help you?”
After getting me help I found out that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish, Montana who asked that the Chaplain to look me up.
From that moment on I never had depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatice progress physically. Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.
I still could not mover a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.
I was moved from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are closed to being released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse on that floor.
One day the doctors looked at me and my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my support system.
Flying Nurses International flew with me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mt.
It wasn’t until I was back in Montana that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal business, had been meeting and praying for me daily throughout my ordeal.
You see, the doctors were right, I am a living miracle. And I was right, I could not come back on my own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my friends and that Chaplain to help me back.
John Woods
Kauai, Hawaii
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Lost Wallet
Week of March 11
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
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