GOD STILL PERFORMS MIRACLES
                                                                   FOR THOSE WHO TRUST IN HIM

          The following is personal testimony to glorify God and our Lord Jesus Christ as to His faithfulness to see us through dangerous and perilous situations by doing the impossible on our behalf.  It is so wonderful how God looks after His children and that Jesus makes intercession for us to the Father.

          I will begin with an event that happened to my wife and a friend of hers after they left a woman’s meeting at our church in Winter Park, Florida.  During the meeting there was a very heavy rain storm that flooded the entire area.  As they exited the church building they both had to remove their shoes and wade through the water to our car in the parking lot.

          My wife knew that the route she takes to the church had low areas and figured the water would be even higher along that route, so she tried driving in a different route that would take her to a main highway.  She did not realize that the route she chose was even at a much lower elevation than she realized.  She couldn’t tell due to the surrounding water level.

          She left the church parking lot heading east and got onto a main road heading south, then she turned east again heading for the highway.  This became a problem as that road dropped so much that the water was now coming over the hood of our car.  Seeing that this was getting deeper she decided to turn around and go back the way she came.  However, with the high water she could no longer tell where the road was as she attempted to make a u-turn. 

           She ended up in the drainage ditch with the car now tilted at an angle with the driver’s side being lower than the passenger side.  The water was halfway up the driver’s side window.  I personally witnessed this when she got home by observing the water line halfway up that window with all the debris that was still on the window.  Obviously, since she was no longer on the pavement, she got stuck in the mud in the ditch.  She then proceeded to use the technique we used to use when we lived up north and got stuck in the snow – she rocked the car forward, then backward until she regained traction.  She did regain traction and was able to drive back up unto the road and proceed to backtrack her way to her normal route and drove home.

          Upon her arrival home she told me about the event to which I responded, “That’s not possible”!  So I went out into the garage to check out her story.  The car had all manner of debris sitting on the hood showing that the water was clearly coming over the hood of the car.  Then I noticed the debris and water line halfway up the driver’s side window.  Again I said, “This is impossible because the entire engine was totally under water”. 

          At this point I had to inspect the engine so I attempted to lift the hood; I couldn’t.  This car had a three inch thick fiber glass insulation attached to the hood to make the engine quiet and that insulation was saturated with water so the hood weighed too much to normally lift.  I had to get a 2x4 board and another piece of wood to pry the hood up and then propped it up with the 2x4.  After getting the hood up I saw water pouring out of the insulation as was now raised up at an angle.

        Then I observed water laying on top of the large air cleaner housing.  I removed the cover to the air cleaner and noticed water laying inside the air cleaner outside the filter element but it was dry inside the area of the filter element.  “How can this be,” I said to my wife.  I then picked up the air filter and water began to pour out of it as it was saturated with water.  “This is impossible,” I said again.

         I asked my wife if the engine quit or was bucking and kicking while she was in the water.  She said, “No, it kept running just fine.”  I then asked her if any of the warning lights came on in the dashboard, again she said, “No”.  Now I declared that “This was a miracle of God and that there must have been and angel in the engine compartment blowing air into the carburetor to keep the engine going.”

          I checked the oil dip stick to see if there was any water that got into the crankcase; it was clean and no evidence of any water which would have made the oil a milky color.  I showed my wife that all the spark plugs were way down on the side of the engine and were way under water and they did not ground out.

         Then I checked inside the car to see what water damage there was from water entering inside.  There was none; everything inside the car was totally dry.  This was another miracle because previously I had a telephone console installed in this car that was bolted onto the cover over the transmission tunnel and the bolt holes were still there, but no water came in through those holes.

        I then went to the rear of the car to check out the trunk to see if any water got in there – none; bone dry.  At this point I realized another miracle had occurred.  The trunk of this car was huge and was like a great big air chamber that would have made the rear of this car float in that level of water.  The heavy 478 cubic inch engine would keep the front end down and the large air chamber trunk would have floated.  This would have it impossible for the car to have any traction when she got stuck in the ditch. 

         Everything about this event was God doing a miracle.  Then I asked my wife what were you and your friend, (who was very pregnant at the time), doing while in this terrifying situation.  She calmly said, “We were both praying in tongues.”  Thus God moved on their behalf and performed several miracles.
At the church service the following Wednesday night I got up and gave a testimony about the event to give the glory to God for performing such a marvelous miracle.  It seemed to fall on deaf ears and there was no response as if people did not believe a word I said.

          A week and half later, just before the Sunday service, the Choir Director came up to me and asked for my forgiveness.  I asked him. “What for?”  He said he did not believe my story about my wife’s experience on that flooded street.  He said he did not believe the water could possibly get that high.  He then said there was another heavy rain storm the past week while he was at the church and the area flooded again.  He then said he drove the same route my wife took and that indeed the water was that deep and his car did not make it.  He had the same kind of car!       

          The next miracle is one that the Lord performed for me.  A friend of mine owned a high performance single engine airplane that he was not allowed to fly; I would fly the plane for him.  Since my wife and son were visiting her family up north I decided to fly this plane north to bring them back home to Florida.  I had checked the weather late at night and made the flight plan to leave early the next morning.

        We took off and headed up the coast line and upon reaching Charleston, South Carolina changed course inland.  However, from Charleston on there was a low level cloud layer covering a massive area northward that was not in the forecast.  It appeared that it was a fog layer that had lifted off the ground but did not disappear.  As we continued onward I had planned to refuel in North Carolina.  After crossing into North Carolina I noticed the low level cloud layer continued beyond what I could see and we were flying at 10,000 feet. 

          I radioed Flight Service for a weather update and was advised that this cloud layer was solid all the way up to Boston.  They also advised that flying conditions were now under IFR, (Instrument Flight Rules).  I declared that I was ending my flight plan and turned around as I would not be able to land for gas in North Carolina as planned.
We were now running low on gas as I was now in South Carolina and still seeing a solid cloud cover all around.  I was flying VFR, (Visual Flight Rules), and was not yet certified for IFR flight conditions although I knew how to do it.  My navigation skills were good and I knew exactly where we were as we came over Florence, South Carolina.  All of a sudden, way down below was a circular opening in the hundreds of miles of cloud cover.  Through that opening I saw an airport and told my friend, “That’s Florence Airport”.  He said it can’t be because there were military aircraft on the field.

         I called the tower and asked for landing clearance and they responded that the airport was closed to VFR fight and was IFR only.  My friend not believing it was Florence Airport asked about the military aircraft on the field and they said they have a military museum at one end of the field.  I then requested a Special VFR clearance which they approved. 

             We were still at 10,000 feet and had to make a steep and rapid decent.  The tower, in order to cover themselves for granting a Special VFR clearance, requested that I report the cloud base as I descended.  I reported the cloud base at 600 feet and had to fly the landing pattern at 500 which was well below pattern altitude.

          I landed and taxied to the FBO (Fixed Base Operator) and the lineman guided me to a parking spot and I shut down the engine.  The first miracle involved in this situation was God opening up the clouds right where the airport was that I needed to land at. 

          The fuel truck arrived and began to put gas in the two wing tanks.  The gas man then came over to me and asked where the third gas tank was.  I told him there are only two gas tanks, one in each wing.  He said there has to be another gas tank in that plane because both those tanks were bone dry and he saw our engine was running perfectly until I shut it down.  Next miracle, God kept the engine running even though we were out of fuel.  The gas man left scratching his head in disbelief.  God miraculously provided the gas we needed to get safely down.

       Next is a miracle of God’s divine provision.  After returning to Florida from pastoring a church in Minnesota, we moved into my mother’s house as we now had no income.  I soon took a position as head of the Junior High classes of a local Christian Private School formed by a church that I had a prior relationship with.  They couldn’t pay me a livable salary so we survived on prayer and trust in God.

        It soon became evident that we needed to find our own place to live as things were kind of stressful with Connie, our son and infant daughter and me living in my mother’s  house.  My very limited income was not sufficient to pay rent in even the poorest quality of living spaces.  At the same time I was also invited to minister briefly in another country through associations I had made in previous years.

        Being quite desperate to have a place to live I decided to put it all into God’s hands.  Just before heading for a two week mission trip to Lima, Peru, I told God that since I was not able to find housing with my limited income, I requested that He find the housing for me and bring it to me since I did not know where to look.  Then I got bold and made demands for a three bedroom, two bath, house in a good neighborhood.

        I went off to Peru and when I returned there was a message for me that there was a couple that needed someone to live in and care for their residence while they were on the road doing ministry work in RV parks across the nation.  I contacted them and they agreed to let us live in their four bedroom, two bath, house for the small amount of money that I could afford.  This house also had a new washer and dryer and free telephone service since he was retired from AT&T.  We lived there for two years until after I began working as a professor at the seminary making a livable income.  God answered my prayer even better than I requested, and God brought it to me, I didn’t have to go out and search for it.

           Our God is an AWESOME GOD!