Pray Specifically

 

April

 

 She is introduced as Ms Julie. You don’t use last names when you are running from an abuser. She rode a bus to Florida with one suitcase and the clothes on her back. She had been directed to a shelter. She obtained a job waiting table at a restaurant within walking distance of the shelter.  

 

 

 

"What I really needed was a car to go on interviews and find a better job. So I prayed very specifically for a four-door Camry (she had had one once) so I could take people to church with me. I wanted a clean beige or brown car.

 

"A few days later I received a call from a caring organization that donates used cars to needy people. They had heard of my plight and called to say they had a car for me.

 

“When I arrived to pickup my car I was told the donor had taken it to a car wash. A few minutes later a car entered the parking lot and I knew it was a gift from God. It was a sparkling beige four-door Camry and it was clean.”

 

Ms Julie

Sarasota County

Long Distance Jump Start

 

Week of January 13

 

It’s been a long day and we are all tired by the time we land at Tampa International Airport. We still have another hour to drive home to Sarasota.

 

The exhilaration of seeing our son graduate earlier that day from Navy boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois is fading  and exhaustion is taking over.

 

By the time Marcia and I retrieve the bags including her mother’s luggage, it is nearly midnight. Now the challenge is to find our car in the color coded parking garage with its monorail system and stops named for aviation pioneers.

 

Alleluia! We find it on the first try.

The bags are loaded in the trunk, mom flops into the back seat, Marcia and I in the front. I turn the key and it won’t start. I try again. No luck.

 

Now what?

 

Marcia announces, “we can call triple A and wait for them to find someone to come out and help us, or we can pray right here and right now.”

 

There is a groan and a barely audible “Oh No,” from the back seat.

 

Marcia places her hands firmly on the dash and says, “Lord—its late, we are tired-you know our situation- we need your help to start this car and get us home in one piece. Thank You Lord.” 

 

The car starts on the very next try.

 

“I’m a believer now,” says the voice from the back seat.

 Robert DesRosiers, Sarasota

Reprinted from Go Figure Sarasota/Manatee with permission
available at Amazon.com.
 

Pizza Hut Providence

Spiritually charged yet physically depleted and running on adrenaline, I steered the oversized van into the parking lot of a South Carolina Pizza Hut.

I and the students with me were several hours into our drive home to Southeast Florida following an incredible week of Summer Camp with 700 other students from church youth groups throughout the United States.

The kids had said their goodbyes to new friends, exchanging numbers and promising to stay in touch after spending six action-packed days and nights together. It was a week filled with inspiring worship and innovative biblical teaching, wacky relays, a rousing camp talent show and a funky costume contest. Several of my students made life-changing spiritual decisions and all of us felt a closer connection to our heavenly Dad.

The theme for the week was Servanthood—allowing God to minister to others through us.

I planned our meal stop after the lunch rush so we could get in and out and back on the road as quickly as possible. As my jovial, chattering students filed into the restaurant, we barely noticed the tables cluttered with half empty plastic cups, crumpled napkins and crusty dishes. Focused on exuberantly sharing their camp experiences with each other while keeping an eye on the restroom lines, the kids were totally unaware of their surroundings. Soon we realized we were the only ones in the dining room, and our group occupied most of the tables.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, and soon the chatter died down long enough for us to realize we had not seen a server and we hadn’t even been offered menus.
At that moment I saw a pregnant young woman emerge from the kitchen and briefly stop behind the counter near the cash register.. Being careful not to cast a glance our way, she disappeared back into the kitchen without a word. By this time thirty-five minutes had passed and the kids were hungry and cranky. I was frustrated and antsy to get back on the road. By the time she appeared again, we had logged forty-five minutes at our stop, and still had no menus.
I approached the counter intending to complain. In that moment God helped me to see the situation through his eyes. No longer did I see a dirty restaurant with lazy employees ignoring a dining room of restless students and their anxious leader.

Instead I saw an overwhelmed expectant mother, not much older than the students in my group, tired and alone and dying to prop up her swollen feet.

Instead of explaining the rush we were in and asking why she was not taking care of us, I heard myself asking if she had a damp cloth I could use.

Without a word I started going table to table gathering dirty silverware, stacking plates and plastic cups and delivering them to the counter. One by one I noticed my students slowly and quietly beginning to follow suit. Once the dishes were cleared I washed the table tops with the cloth she had given me. This continued until every table in the place was clean.

The mood began to transition from impatient exasperation to compassionate assistance. Each student’s silent service was an act of pure worship, filling us with reverent gratitude, and I believe it made God smile.

The meal we received from that South Carolina Pizza Hut brought with it the realization that God had given us the perfect setting to flesh out the biblical principle of Servanthood we had just learned at camp.

What an amazing gift!

Julie Smith Searer
Northport

Brace Yourself

January 2012

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, ct 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 eight-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 The Paddocks, Sarasota

A Toddler and a Stranger

November 2011

My husband and I had been attending the Church of the Way, in Van Nuys California for sometime.

This particular Sunday was baby dedication day but our 15 month old stayed in the nursery because we had had her dedicated earlier. Following the brief ceremony the parents returned their babies to the nursery.

Looking back, we think that was when a door must have been left open and our little Andrea slipped out of the nursery unnoticed. She apparently made her way outside to the sidewalk and walked between two parked cars and was about to enter busy Van Nuys Boulevard when a man picked her up and brought her into the church foyer.

He presented her to an elder saying simply he found this little girl getting ready to cross Van Nuys Blvd. The elder recognized Andrea and sent someone into the church to get me.

When I saw Andrea she was lying quietly in the arms of the elder. It wasn’t until she saw me that she began to scream and cry.

Together, the three of us went back to the nursery. Everyone there was upset that Andrea had gotten out and relieved that she was safe.

The man that had brought her in was gone and the elder said he hadn’t seen him before. The odd thing was that Andrea didn’t go to men, not even to her father. Her tendency would be to run from a man especially a stranger. But the elder said she looked very peaceful in the man’s arm and she didn’t fuss when he took her from him and cradled her.

Some may call this luck but after people had calmed down the sentiment at the nursery was that someone was looking out for Andrea and sent an angel to rescue my little girl. I would not argue otherwise.

Barbara Koukl
Sarasota
(Editors Note: Andrea, now a mother of four, runs a day care business in Florida near her parents.)

Copyright Go Figure Sarasota/Bradenton reprinted with permission.

Masters Quartet

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 sending 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 as 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
Tamaron, Sarasota,Fl.

"Bob"

I was going through a really difficult time. I was recovering from a divorce, my daughter was living away from home at school and the bank I was working for was going under due to big mistakes in real estate lending.

Then the unthinkable happened. My male friend committed suicide. I found his body slumped over in his garage still in his car. He was a colleague at the bank and I cared for him deeply. I never felt more alone.

The following evening a dear friend from the bank, Noreen, came to my apartment with her husband David. They gathered up a few of my things, literally carried me to their car and drove me to their home.

Noreen was also a good friend of the man who had tragically taken his own life. She made a wonderful bed for me out of the couches in her living room, make a fire in the fireplace and instead of bringing me a box of tissues she brought me all her frilly hankies. She also made a pot of my favorite tea.

While Noreen and I talked about our deceased friend and some of the times we spent together, her son Paul, who was probably five or six at the time, kept coming in and out of the room. Each trip he brought a handful of toys or stuffed animals, which he lined up next to me on the couch. The more I thanked him the more things he brought me. Eventually the couch was filled up and he began placing the toys on the floor next to me. In his little boy way he was bringing everything he had to comfort his mother’s friend who obviously was crying and sad. Lastly he brought into the room his most precious possession-his baby blanket.

I’m a major baby blanket person. When I was a child I had a crib-sized blanket that was very much a part of my life until I was fourteen. I would hold it to my nose; suck my thumb, especially in turbulent times. That blanket brought me comfort and joy. It had been loved to death and by the time I was 14 it had been reduced to the size of a silver dollar.

I understand all things baby blanket. Those of us who were baby blanket people have a way of finding each other. We have a language that only we understand. So little Paul and I immediately had this bond and he showed me his baby blanket that looked like a large blob of shredded rags tied together in large knots.

He called his baby blanket “Bob.” We agreed that the very worse thing that can happen is when well meaning moms wash our baby blankets.It takes weeks to get them back in shape and to properly smell again.

After a while, Paul and “Bob” went off to bed.

When the house was quiet I began reflecting and I began to cry and even sob. My shaking with grief was interrupted by the sound of shuffling little feet. It was Paul walking towards me carrying “Bob.” Without saying a word, he gently laid “Bob” in my arms, turned and left the room, closing the French doors behind him.

At that moment, I knew that God was using this child to comfort me in my time of pain and sorrow.
To this day, I am blown away by that precious little one obeying the prodding of the Lord and lending me his most cherished possession that evening. God manifested his love that night to me.


Joy Holloway
The Meadows
Sarasota,Florida