Signs along the road, Part 3, 1982-1996

For road signs to be helpful in directing us to a specific location, they don’t have to be enormous. But they do have to be frequent enough to assure us we are still on the right road, or to prompt us when to turn. Similarly, the signs the Lord promised would follow those who believe are seldom spectacular. But they can be constant, if we look for them. This is the promised third installment of my series detailing selected instances of divine intervention we have seen along our road.

Automotive Angels

 

 

We saw many instances of divine help on long trips across the country, as well as on shorter trips around town, when mechanical problems would develop. Almost invariably, we would be blessed in one of the following ways:

• We would be enabled to fix the problem ourselves and continue on our way. Sometimes an apparent problem would even resolve itself without any special attention. A clutch problem on my motorcycle seemed to respond better to prayer than to my attempts to play mechanic.
• When we would break down, or threaten to break down, it typically was very near a freeway exit, where a mechanic would be available to help us.
• Repair shops would be able to make needed repairs more quickly than anticipated, enabling us to keep scheduled appointments.
• We would feel prompted to look at the gas gauge just before the last good chance to stop to refuel or would feel prompted to exit the freeway just in time to get to a desired destination without a lot of backtracking.
• We would notice a problem, such as a seriously worn trailer tire, while stopped at a gas station where we could easily change it, rather than have it blow on the highway and have to be replaced there.
• Someone with mechanical skills would stop to help us, even passing up others with similar needs, indicating that he hadn’t intended to stop, but somehow felt he needed to. It became so predictable that once when it happened to my wife and kids, one of our young daughters asked Virginia, “Have you been praying again?”

Mount Whitney and other Scout adventures

1982: A fifty-mile backpacking trip as scoutmaster, leading my scouts to the top of 14,495-foot Mount Whitney, the tallest in the forty-eight lower states, provided the opportunity to see several tender mercies, including:

• Being able to overcome the challenges of an overheating radiator and failed alternator on the way to the trailhead.

• Being able to convince a scout with significant blisters on his feet after the two or three days that it would be possible for him to continue the trip and impractical to try to send someone back with him to the car to wait there for several days.

• Having one adult leader strengthened to carry a second leader’s backpack as well as his own for many miles, when that second leader became ill.

• Being protected from serious injury in spite of having to cross a sloping snow field, with a steep drop below us. Also, being personally enabled to catch myself on a protrusion of a rock when I slipped on a muddy trail and found myself slipping toward the edge.

• Getting the group past the challenges of snow, rain, and hail, with the lack of oxygen attendant to that elevation.

• Having my ten and twelve-year-old sons able to complete the entire trip without problems or complaints.

• Being able to get our van out again at the end of the trip, after finding a mudslide had covered the road.

 

1984: A couple of years later we took a similar group of scouts to hike 75 miles in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. Again, we felt a protective hand on at least a couple of occasions:

• Two grizzly bears came very near our camp on the last day of our stay in one area. A week later, another camper was attacked and killed by a grizzly in that same place while he slept.

• A couple of days later, on the same trip, we came upon a grizzly cub on the trail. We knew that where there were cubs there would almost certainly be a mother grizzly, who would not take kindly to any perceived threat to her youngster. We all did a quick about face, loosened our packs, and prepared to climb trees. I have since learned that climbing trees may not have helped in any case, even if we had succeeded in climbing one. We were relieved that we were able to quickly and quietly retreat without even seeing the mother bear.

 

Feeling inspired in purchase of new home in Athens, Georgia

After seventeen years in California, the Church Educational System asked us to accept a transfer to Athens, Georgia, where I would direct the Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Georgia and supervise volunteer seminary and institute teachers in nearby stakes. In late June we flew to Athens to look for a home. After a day of looking, with the help of a recommended real estate agent, we were undecided. Or, better said, Virginia and I had different opinions as to which, if any, of the options we had seen that day would be the best choice. I awoke in the middle of the night, however, listed pros and cons of each, and felt strongly that a place at 135 Robin Road was the right place. That had been Virginia’s preference from the beginning, but it was well down my own list. The agent the next day was bewildered that we had made our minds up so quickly, but we both felt united that the Lord had led us to the home we needed. It turned out to be a wonderful home for us and our family for the following twelve years. We were grateful to be reminded again that the Lord can give help even in seemingly temporal matters.

 

Miracles in Mexico

Feeling that southern Mexico and Guatemala were the likely setting for much of the Book of Mormon, we wanted our family to see those lands. We accordingly took my parents and two of our oldest daughters on a do-it-yourself trip in 1985. The next summer I took five others of our children and two of their friends on a trip to Mexico. Then in 1988 we took the youngest eight of our children to both Mexico and Guatemala. On all three occasions we felt blessed with unusual divine assistance. The following accounts are illustrative rather than exhaustive

• 1985: On our way by bus to Panajachel (Lake Atitlan), Guatemala, from Quetzaltenango, we were dismayed when our driver let us off in the early morning dark at a deserted rural intersection several miles from our destination. It was starting to rain, but we found refuge in some unoccupied kiosks while we waited for it to get light. We discovered that another bus coming from another direction would be passing by there shortly to take us the rest of the way into town.

• 1985: When we returned to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, after three weeks of traveling, we discovered our van was no longer in front of the train station where we had left it. Miraculously, we were able to get it back. First, our faith was tried overnight as we booked a motel and contemplated our next move. But in the morning the police called to tell us they had found the van and we could pick it up. It was slightly worse for the wear, but still drivable. We had just enough cash on us to persuade the officers to release it to us, and we gratefully made it home to Georgia without further incident.

• 1986: One of our kids’ friends had his wallet lifted on the Metro (subway) in Mexico City. He lost only twenty-one dollars in cash, but he also lost his tourist card. Thereafter there were five separate occasions on which officials boarded our buses to check everyone’s papers. Each time I just handed them a stack of paper, and they never bothered to count both noses and documents, so we never got in trouble over the lost permit.

• 1986: The biggest adventure in Mexico City (a city of nearly 25,000,000 people) was my losing all the kids on the subway, except for Ricky, our 9 year old. The trains were all so crowded that we decided we couldn’t all get on the same car at the same time, so we spread out along the platform and agreed that we’d all eventually meet again at a designated stop. After an abortive first attempt, I managed to push Ricky onto the second train and follow him on. It was just as hard pulling him off through the crowd at our stop, but we made it. But we looked for forty-five minutes before we could ever find the rest of the group. It turned out that Regina had made it onto the first train and the rest had made it onto the third, but they all waited inside the station for me and Ricky, whereas the crowd had virtually pushed Ricky and me up the stairs and outside with them, where we were looking for the rest of the group. We were much relieved when at last we were all reunited.

• 1988: On our trip to Mexico and Central America with our kids, we arrived at night in Belize City with no hotel reservations. We had a guide-book suggestion, but that place was evidently no longer in operation. We must have presented an interesting spectacle with the ten of us and our suitcases walking through the streets! But we eventually did find lodging, as well as conveniently located and inexpensive food. We had many such experiences, including one of our younger children’s being able to wait several hours longer than anticipated for a bathroom stop, as the bus we were on had no toilets.

Son blessed in battle

Our son David enlisted in the army when he turned 19 to earn money for his mission, having been unable to find anything sufficiently lucrative at home. While there, he was unexpectedly caught up in the first Gulf War as a driver of a fire support vehicle. Fire support personnel were to be up front in an invasion, calling in artillery fire on enemy positions. David and a couple of dozen other vehicles were to be in the lead of the entire First Armored Division. The war turned out to be brief, with comparatively few casualties on the US side. But prior to the start of the war, there were predictions that it would be a bloody conflict. It was a sobering prospect for a young man and for his parents, who had seen him miraculously preserved as a one year old with staph pneumonia, and who hoped his guardian angel was still on duty.

The first miracle, to us, was that David felt calm and spiritually ready for whatever might happen. He had been reading his scriptures, praying, and justifiably felt his life was in order. We were grateful for the peace he felt, which may well have been greater than our own. I remember, as the war had just broken out, choking up at church as we sang verse four of “Come, Come Ye Saints”—“And should we die, before our journey’s through, happy day! All is well.”

It was some days before we got word that David and most of his company had come through unscathed. His funniest experience, though at the time I’m sure it was a bit disconcerting, was to have the transmission go out on his armored vehicle just a couple of miles before their first encounter. After he sat for a bit at some unknown spot in Iraq and wondered what was going to happen next, some mechanics in a tank came along, and David ended up being towed into battle behind an M1A1 tank! He says the heat from the tank’s exhaust turned their vehicle into a sauna, but if they opened their hatches they got plastered from the mud the tank was churning up in front of them.

 

The first day or two they didn’t have much action, other than to accept some grateful Iraqi prisoners of war who were very happy to get something to eat and drink. On February 27th they had a day long battle with one of the elite divisions of the Republican Guard. David says it was relatively one sided, though they did take a little incoming artillery fire. He says if his camera hadn’t broken down, he could have got some great photos. It was dark most of the time, both from the overcast and rain and from the oil fires, but he says the sky was almost constantly lit up from all the exploding ammunition going off–primarily from our side. He says one shell landed about 50 meters away from his vehicle but didn’t go off. The closest one which did explode landed about 100 meters from him. He says they lost only one man from his entire brigade, which he considers a miracle, though a few others were wounded, including one fellow that was on David’s soccer team in Germany. One man lost a foot after stepping on an unexploded bomblet at a bunker David had explored only shortly before. (David decided maybe he didn’t want souvenirs that badly after all!)

We were most grateful for David’s preservation. We have been equally grateful for protection afforded his brothers Danny and Ricky and our son-in-law Sean during subsequent service in Iraq, and during David’s own later deployment in Afghanistan.

 

Call as stake president

In May 1991 our stake was to be divided and a new Sugar Hill Georgia Stake was to be created. I tried not to be presumptuous, but I felt enough premonition that I could be called that I gave significant advance thought to possible counselors. That proved to be timely, as Elder Alexander Morrison gave me only twenty minutes to recommend counselors once he had extended me the call to serve as president of the new stake. I felt very comfortable in telling him Walter Mockett and George Wangemann should be the new counselors. I felt equally guided in selecting a clerk, an executive secretary, a skeletal high council and stake auxiliary leaders in quick order, many of whom I had not previously known, so that the new stake could begin to function without delay.

May I take this opportunity to remind the reader of the importance of taking pictures of everything you would like someday to remember. I am dismayed to find I don’t have a single photo of the Sugar Hill Stake presidency, let alone the high council and other stake leaders. I would gladly trade a hundred now meaningless photos of scenery for one good photo of more significant events and people.

 

Mother protected

 

In July 1993 my seventy-seven year old mother, Bernice Cazier, was spared serious injury in an accident with a garden cultivator. She wrote:

“I just had an accident with the garden cultivator. I tried to turn it around a hose that was curled up at the end of the garden. I was standing in the middle of the coiled-up hose and I didn’t raise the cultivator high enough. It caught the hose and quickly sucked it into the blades of the cultivator with me in it. It threw me to the ground, but I had presence of mind enough to grab the gear lever and throw it out of gear on the way down. Both feet were wound tightly in the hose and all was right up in the blades. Another second and it would have started chopping my feet up. I screamed for Johnny. He came, and it took quite a while to get me untangled. It made a bad place on my left ankle where it took the skin and flesh off. It’s still there but rubbed loose from the bone. My other ankle hurt quite a bit, but nothing is broken. I can still walk. I have been putting ice on it and have not put anti-biotic ointment on and hope it heals all right. I feel very fortunate that I’m not hurt worse. For a moment I envisioned both feet chopped to pieces. I will be more careful from now on.” It so easily could have been so much worse.

Part 4 of this series will feature experiences, personal and vicarious, from our three-year mission to Mexico City from 1996-99.