God and a Rag Doll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week of September 29

One morning before leaving for high school, God put it on my heart that I was going to be in a car accident that day. I told my older sister who urged me not to go to school.

 

I told her I had to go today because if I was absent or late one more day I was risking being expelled. Besides I had stayed up late finishing the hair on my Raggedy Ann Doll for my Home Economics class that had to be turned in this morning in order to get credit.

 

My friend Robin drove up in her Riviera at the usual time. While my sister kept telling me not to tempt fate by going to school, I prayed over the car asking God for his protection. When I got into the car with my books and Raggedy Ann doll I noticed a St. Christopher Medal hanging from the rear view mirror. It hadn’t been there before.

 

“Who gave you the medal Robin, your mother?”

 

“My  grandmother.”

 

That’s neat I thought, we can use all the protection possible, especially today. Everything went well until we entered the Natchez Highway and Robin speeded up. We hit a patch of black ice and slid off the highway and smashed onto a cement irrigation box that propelled the car backwards. We flipped completely over three times before coming to a stop right side up. I passed out. I came too with Robin yelling my name.

 

I was crunched up against the mangled door and window that was shattered and bowed from the impact. Wedged between my head and the window was the Raggedy Ann Doll. The hair of the doll was caught at the top of the window and the doll acted as cushion for me preventing serious injury.

 

Robin and I crawled out of the car and ran off to the first house we could see to call our parents. When we returned to the car a state trooper was standing by our wreck. He said when he saw the damage and nobody in the car he thought our bodies had already been taken to the morgue. He told us we shouldn’t have left the scene of an accident.

 

Our parents arrived and they drove us to school but nobody ever said anything about being late that day.

 

Colleen Jorgenson

 Veradale, Washington

Moment of Faith

 

Week of September 22, 2013 

 

 In 1946, I was stationed in the Aleutian Islands as a chaplain for the United States Air Force. Our particular island , Shemya, was shaped like an oyster and was just large enough to have one important airstrip.

 

One night a tremendous earthquake broke open the deep water of the Bay of Alaska and sent tons of surge water ( a tsunami) toward our island. The high flood water, much higher than our island, was to hit us at about 3 a.m.

 

We had 3,600 men on the island, but only one surface craft for about 200. The idea of evacuation was abandoned.

 

Hundreds of men and officers gathered in the chapel on the high side of the island. Our highest elevation was about 18 feet and we were warned to expect about forty feet. Every light was on in the chapel. We had both large and small prayer services and the men periodically sang songs of all faiths and wrote letters. Many men sat alone thinking of their families and what the impending death by drowning would be like.

 

At about 4 a.m. the wave came. There was a strong gush of wind and high water, but nothing like the predicted 40 feet. The island of Adak, lying 400

 

miles to the east broke the wave in two, with one half going into the Bearing Sea and the other toward Hawaii.

 

We were spared. Lots of water (ranging from15 to 18 feet) and a lot of mopping up, but there were no casualties. Not a single life was lost. The water came as far as the Chapel steps. Our faith had been lifted by total trust and dependence on God, and he came to our rescue.

 

Lionel W. Nelson, USAF retired

Sunny Side Village, Sarasota

 

“Copyright©2003, Sarasota Herald-Tribune.Reprinted with express permission of the Sarasota-Herald Tribune.”

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 In 1946, I was stationed in the Aleutian Islands as a chaplain for the United States Air Force. Our particular island , Shemya, was shaped like an oyster and was just large enough to have one important airstrip.

 

One night a tremendous earthquake broke open the deep water of the Bay of Alaska and sent tons of surge water ( a tsunami) toward our island. The high flood water, much higher than our island, was to hit us at about 3 a.m.

 

We had 3,600 men on the island, but only one surface craft for about 200. The idea of evacuation was abandoned.

 

Hundreds of men and officers gathered in the chapel on the high side of the island. Our highest elevation was about 18 feet and we were warned to expect about forty feet. Every light was on in the chapel. We had both large and small prayer services and the men periodically sang songs of all faiths and wrote letters. Many men sat alone thinking of their families and what the impending death by drowning would be like.

 

At about 4 a.m. the wave came. There was a strong gush of wind and high water, but nothing like the predicted 40 feet. The island of Adak, lying 400

 

miles to the east broke the wave in two, with one half going into the Bearing Sea and the other toward Hawaii.

 

We were spared. Lots of water (ranging from15 to 18 feet) and a lot of mopping up, but there were no casualties. Not a single life was lost. The water came as far as the Chapel steps. Our faith had been lifted by total trust and dependence on God, and he came to our rescue.

 

Lionel W. Nelson, USAF retired

Sunny Side Village, Sarasota

 

“Copyright©2003, Sarasota Herald-Tribune.Reprinted with express permission of the Sarasota-Herald Tribune.”

God Provides a Car

 

Week of September 15

 

When I was 24 and single, I was working at a dead-end job and in debt. In an attempt to get a handle on my spending I attended a Good $ense Finance course at my church (Willow Greek in Barrington Illinois, a suburb northwest of Chicago.)

 

I volunteered for Willow’s cars program, which repairs used, donated cars and made them available for single moms. I like working on engines and besides my old Honda was on its last legs and I hoped to get some tips on how to keep it going.

 

About this time I received in the mail a promotion from my credit union informing me that I was pre-approved for a car loan up to $7500. The wheels in my head began to turn. I figured if I were going to get a better job I would need a better car. Armed with my car loan approval, I drove off to a used car dealer. I showed the promotion flyer to the salesman and we went off into the lot. Funny how every car he showed me was for sale at $7500.

 

I came home excited about the prospect of buying a better car. That week at church I shared my excitement about buying a better car with my Good $ense teacher. I told him about the $7500 loan

 

approval and I showed him a car I had circled in the Auto Trader.

 

“God does not want you to go further into debt,” my teacher said, “why don’t you trust him for the car.”

 

His words, while spoken softly, hit me like a cold shower. I bristled but he was right, I had agreed not to take out any more loans. At the Good $ense course I had developed a spending plan which was designed to help me live within my income and to pay down debt. We were taught that good stewardship of the resources we have honors God.

 

When I returned home I threw the Auto Trader in the trash. I was going to trust God. At that moment I felt God was in the next room whispering, “I love you.” He didn’t solve my car problem that day but He showed His presence to me.

 

The next day I received a call ‘out of the blue’ from the leader of the Cars Team who said he was calling to see how I was doing.

 

That weekend I volunteered at the church cars program and I mentioned to the chief mechanic how my transmission was slipping and I was having a hard time getting in or out of second gear. I also mentioned I didn’t have any money for a better car right now and I wondered if he could help me fix my old Honda.

 

I was surprised when he didn’t ask me for more details about my aging wreck. He just walked off motioning with his arm for me to follow. We went to the back of the lot and we stopped at an old rusted out twelve- year- old Buick station wagon.

 

“It’s not pretty,” he said “And it is too far gone to give to a single mom to transport her kids. But it has a strong engine, reasonably good tires, and the transmission still works. Why don’t you drive it home.”

 

God did provide. I ended up driving that car for nearly two years until I could afford a better one.

 

Peter Buchan

West Barrington  Il.

Singing for the Lord

 

Week of September 8, 3013

 

We were on our way back to Fayetteville NC from Augusta, Georgia where we sang to about 700 people in the First Baptist Church when our old bus broke down along I-95 somewhere in South Carolina. We thought at first we had blown a tire but then we realized the engine was still running but it wouldn’t go in gear.

Our piano player Earl Britt said,” the only thing I know to do is to start praying.”

We are on our knees when there is a knock on the side of the bus. I get up and go to the door and here is an elderly gentleman with a straw hat, white shirt and bib overalls and a sports jacket. He says you boys a quartet?  Now we’ve got  letters on the side of the bus that are three feet high that say Masters Quartet. I chuckled and said Yes Sir.  He says would you boys be able to sing tonight?  I was just getting ready to tell him no, when my younger brother Tommy jerked me out of the way and says. “Yes sir we will but we can’t go, our bus broke down.”

He says, “That’s no problem, I can be back in about 15 minutes. with some trucks to take you and your equipment to my house. In about twenty minutes he came back with two Ford Stake trucks. a station wagon and a wrecker.

I told the wrecker driver that we didn’t have any money and to leave the bus be. The love offering we received from the Baptist church was only $50 and between us we didn’t have $200.

We all pile in the trucks and station wagon and go to the preacher’s house which is out n the country about 30 miles from the interstate. When we arrive his wife has dinner ready for us. The food was set up on two long tables. We finish eating and watch a little TV. What we didn’t know was that this preacher, his wife and two children all had separate telephone lines and were calling people and telling them to be at the church at 6:30.

We learn that Pastor Reed had been a preacher for an Assembly of God church in Indiana. When his parents died he had come to South Carolina to live on their farm. When the pastor of the local Presbyterian church died he was asked if he would fill in. He’s been filling in for several years now. 

When we get to this old wooden church in the middle of a tobacco field it is packed. After singing about five songs the preacher tells us to go back to where the refreshments are as he is going to take up a love offering for us. After what happened at the First Baptist church I’m kind of leery and I stand by the door.

When the ushers come forward with the plates he looks over the podium and says ,“that ain’t goner work…these boys sang at a big Baptist church in Augusta and they got $50…that ain’t happenin here. Now I’m gonna send these ushers back out and when they come back if these plates aren’t full I’m gonna tell what I know and who I know it on.” 

They finish the collection and call us back out and we sing a little more and the last song we did was Sinner Saved by Grace. We use that at our altar call.

As the preacher is praying this little blonde haired girl comes running down the aisle to ask God to save her. She had run away from home and had been gone for sometime and had returned home and asked her mommy and daddy to forgive her and they said if God has forgiven you we will. And that is why she was running to the altar to ask God to forgive her and become her Savior.

After all was said and done our piano player says to me, “Is that our bus I hear running outside?”  I look out the door and there is the wrecker driver standing by our bus in greasy overalls with his hat in his hand.

I say, “you fixed it.”

He says, “Yep.”

 “ How much do we owe you?”

 “You owe us nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

He says, “that little girl who just went to the altar is my daughter. She wouldn’t have come if y’all hadn’t been here tonight.”

I asked him what was wrong with our bus and he says all the bolts on the fly wheel had fallen out and were laying in the dust pan.

“ Wait a minute. I’m mechanic enough to know that bolts don’t fall out of a flywheel, especially on a bus. They have locking caps on them and they don’t fall out, you have to drill them out.”

He says,  “Every one of them was laying in the pan and not a threat on anyone of them was torn off.  God backed the bolts out of that flywheel so you would be here so my daughter would hear the singing and your testimony that you brought here tonight.”

 As we drove home I opened the envelope containing our love offering.  We counted out coins and small bills totaling $ 1200.           .

About four months later we got a phone call from Preacher Reed who said they were trying to raise money to build a new church. He wanted a gospel sing and would we help. We got three and four other groups we knew and we drove to South Carolina to sing in the middle of a football field standing on a flatbed trailer. That night  they raised over $100,000.

They built the church and invited us back to sing at their first service . When we pulled up in front of the church there was a big piece of marble block on the Northeast corner of the building. Inscribed on that block was Masters Quartet and they listed all ten names in our group, the four singers, the five musicians, and our bus driver.

We kept in touch over the years and we went back and sang at Preacher Reed’s funeral. He  had filled in for 15 years.

Lee Bissette

Fayetteville NC

Chance Meetings??

Week of September 1

 

 The beginning of the year is a good time to look ahead and to make some changes. In my case I decided that twelve years working in the same piano store in Poughkeepsie, New York was long enough.

 

I had gone about as far as I could go working in this family-owned store. Besides, twelve years of upstate New York winters was enough. It was time to move to Florida. When I informed Jon Vincitore, the owner of the store, he urged me to stay one more year. I agreed to stay until the fall.

 

In the spring I attended a national conference and met the owners of a piano store in Sarasota, Florida. They invited me down to Florida for an interview. I told a regular customer and former employee of the Poughkeepsie store, John DelVecchio, that I was going to Sarasota.

 

“Maybe you’ll bump into my cousin, Ray White. He can play the drum, guitar and he can sing. You’ll like him. He is doing construction right now somewhere in the Sarasota/Bradenton/Venice area.”

 

“Do you have a number I can call or an address?”   He had neither.

 

In July I flew to Sarasota for my interview with the principles of O’Lynn Callahan Piano and Organ at the Corner of Bee Ridge and Tamiami Trail. The interview went well and I followed them to look at their new store in Venice, a twenty minute drive south. Before the morning was over we agreed I would manage their Venice store in the fall.

 

On the way back up Route 41 I was driving through Osprey when I saw a sign “Condo for Rent.” I stopped and within an hour I had made a deposit on it. I now had a job and a place to stay when I returned. I had accomplished in a half day what I thought would take me several days. Now it was time to look around.

 

I drove into Sarasota Square Mall. Walking through that mall I ran across a piano/organ store with several young men taking turns playing an organ set up in front of the store. As I lingered to watch a little guy walked up to me and asked, “Can I help you?”

 

“Oh,” I said, “ I’m just looking around. I just flew down from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for an interview,”

 

“Poughkeepsie Huh?   Do you happen to know John DelVecchio?” he asked.

 

“RAY?  RAY WHITE?”

 

 I don’t know who was more surprised, Ray. or me.  Turns out he had left construction recently and that this was his second day at this store. While neither of us was particularly religious at that point we both agreed our meeting this way, “Must be a God thing.” I still get goose bumps up and down my arms when I recall that moment.

 

Before moving to Florida I set out to say goodbye to family and special friends living in New York and New England. However, saying goodbye to Uncle Dennis was going to be a challenge. No one knew exactly where he was living, somewhere in the Berkshires was what I was told.

 

One day while driving the Mass Pike to return to Poughkeepsie I intentionally pulled off at the Lee/ Barrington exit for the Berkshires to see if I could find a phone book and locate Uncle Dennis. Besides I was hungry and wanted something to eat. Coming off the exit there is a town to the left and one to the right. It didn’t seem to matter which way I went but something made me feel I should go right. I drove passed several fast food drive-ins that I normally would have driven into and continued down main street to the end of the business district. There at the end was a diner with a single parking space open right in front.

 

 

As I walked up the steps to the entrance I saw there was one man sitting at the counter. The back of his head looked familiar. Could it be? It was him! I slipped in and sat beside the man at the counter and said casually, “Hello Dennis.”

 

 He told me he lived in the town to the left of the exit but he often came to this diner. He especially liked the pies here. If I had tried to look him up in the phonebook I would not have found him. He didn’t have a phone.  I had a nice visit with Dennis that day and actually returned two weeks later to his home where I presented him with a guitar that I knew he wanted.

 

Ray White and I became partners in a band and played together for several years in Florida. We also both became Christians and Ray is now a worship pastor at a church and goes on frequent missions trips to Africa.   I play regularly at worship services for a church and I have also started my own company Worship Media Solutions helping churches with their sound and video needs.

 

As busy as I am, I try to stay attentive to any unexplained prodding or feelings. For example, the other day I left my house to get a haircut when I felt a strong urge to stop at the Living Word Book Store and see Jesse Ramos. So I drove out of my way to the bookstore. In the parking lot I passed a woman

 

walking to her car. I felt I should speak to her but I didn’t know what to say and being basically shy I walked by as she stopped and opened the trunk of a car. As I walked into the store there was Jesse at the counter holding my calling card in his hand and waving his arm at me.

 

“Hey Rick, what timing. There was a gal in here whose church needs your services. She just left.”

 

“She’s there putting something in her trunk,” I said.

 

He looked out the store window, “Yeah that’s her how did you know?”

 

How did I know? How do I explain my bumping into Ray White out of the thousands of people who live and work in Sarasota County? What directed me to that diner in the Berkshires that afternoon I found Uncle Dennis? Why did needing to see Jesse Ramos come to my mind when I started off for a haircut?

 

Were these all chance meetings? I don’t think so, not for a minute.

 

Rick Furrow

Formerly Poughkeepsie, NY&

 Sarasota, Fl. now Phoenix AZ

A near death miracle

 

Week of August 25

In mid July 2009 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. No more 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 dramatic 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.

 The doctors were right, I am a living miracle.  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

A crash,an airbourne baby and an Angel

Week of August 18

 

We are driving home from lunch after church in a driving rain, As usual I’m sitting in the back seat of our van beside our six-month old baby, Rachel. She is strapped in her rear facing car seat and is having a serious crying episode.

After several minutes of trying to comfort her, I realize that she has a very soiled diaper. No wonder she is screaming. I said to my husband, Bob, who is driving, “Brace Yourself, I’m taking her out of her car seat for a minute to change her diaper.”

I place  her on the carpeted floor and change her diaper and remove her stained pants. I think I was still leaning over tying the dirty items in a publix plastic bag when I hear Bob yell, “WATCH Out!”

Our van is T-boned, hit right in the back seat drivers side door. The impact busts out the window beside me and sends our van spinning in the middle of the intersection (Bahia Vista and McIntosh. Rd.)

“Oh my God,” we are in a wreck and Rachael is not in her car seat. Glass is raining over both of us. All I see is little Rachael in mid-air seemingly suspended there for a moment, her bright blue eyes looking right into mine. And then wooosh…she sails out the window…floating like a frizbee through the rain…across that intersection landing in a puddle, on her bottom, screaming and crying.

I am screaming, “my baby, my baby.” My sweet Bob, who doesn’t know Rachael has been ejected, turns around to see about us only to find me stuck in my seat  yelling and pointing across the road screaming, “Go get her, please. Go get her.”

A kind man in a light blue sweater, who sees the accident, gets out of his car to help. He cautions about  not picking her up. Try telling  a daddy he can’t pick up his crying  baby who has been thrown 30 feet through the air, landing in a puddle  inches from the metal base of  a utility pole.

Bob says he knew she was “whole” when he put his hands under her to lift her into his arms. The kind man in the blue sweater, holds a  poncho from sea world over Bob and baby and walks them back as I crawl over the front seat and out of the van.

The ambulance arrives with the EMT’s who see our baby  bleeding from the mouth, strap her on a back board and take us all to Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Several tests are made while we wait three hours for the storm to pass so that Bay Flight can air lift her to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg.  Only patient and flight crew can go in the helicopter so our pastors drive us to St. Pete.

There are four days of MRI’s, C scans and other tests. Everyone is amazed there are no broken bones, internal hemoraging. The bleeding from her mouth turned out to be a small glass cut. Doctors and specialist kept coming in and out of Rachel’s room, all amazed and totally not accepting that she is really ok. They all keep telling us that when someone is thrown from a spinning vehicle the ending is always sad, severe injury or death.

Yes, finally everyone agrees. This is a miracle.

Bob and I are so thankful that our baby was not seriously injured and following checkups have confirmed she is 100% fine. She truly was touched by an angel. When we share her story people can not help themselves from wanting to touch her.

She is now ten-years-old and we look at every day as a true gift. Thank you for reading Rachel’s story and pass it on. Choose to live your life today to the fullest. Brace yourself and live today with passion.

Dundie Crisp                                                                

Sarasota Fl.

PS Moms always have your child buckled up!