As background I'll start with saying that this all occured in a city called Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's the second largest city it Indiana and so for that case the area we covered had a lot of people in it. We had responsibility of carrying the gospel to about 100,000 people or so. This statistic adds to the incredible nature of the miracle so that is why I am sharing it. Quite frequently my companion, Elder Michie (pronounced Mickey) and I would work in some of the more sketchy parts of the city simply because we had so many referrals down there and while there we would find more people to teach. One of those people that we taught in the Fort Wayne ghetto was a girl who called herself J. She lived with her mom who, following the family standard, called herself B. That made it easy for us to remember believe me. J was an awesome girl, she had little religious background and really at first had no interest or care in it. She was turned off by other pastors and preachers who had repeatedly told her that she just needed to repent and that the questions that she had would be answered in time, she just had to wait. No matter how much she pleaded of these church leaders to answer her questions (which were quite simple I have to say) they turned her away and told her to figure it out herself. And so she didn't trust pretty much all church officials. When we approached her and began answering her questions right on the spot, she was impressed and began to absorb it all in. It quickly turned into an investigation and we were teaching her quite frequently. Her mother B was much less interested simply for the fact that she cared more for the partying and drinking than much else at the time. She didn't really want to get into anything big. So we kept on with J and taught her as regularly as possible.
One day when we came to visit J she was not at all herself. It didn't take long before she confessed what hat happened quite recently. Her mom B had a boyfriend that she'd been dating for a reasonable amount of time and they had began to all become really close at least as friends. The boyfriend (we'll call him G for sake of keeping the awesome name selection going) G was headed to work one day when he decided to stop by to see B. He said that he couldn't stay very long since he was headed to work but quite out of the blue he began to bear his testimony to B and J. Both of them were quite surprised because they didn't know G even had a faith, let alone went to church. Well, he outright testified to them that he knew God was real and that they needed to figure that out too as soon as possible. He left on that note with B and J still trying to figure out why the sudden testimony. It wasn't long before they found out. G worked at some sort of construction facility in outer Fort Wayne that had a lot of heavy machinery and other heavy duty things. G was on the ground working on something while a partner was in a backhoe of some sort lifting some objects into place. While in this work, the backhoe lost grip of its holding and dropped it all to the ground. Underneath the dropped cargo was G. He had unfortunately been in the wrong place in the wrong time. It's obvious that G did not plan this in any way, but for some reason, he had been killed on the same day that he had offered his first and last testimony of the Father. When B and J heard about this they were obviously very distraught and very sad, B even had a bit of depression going on for a little while, but they felt blessed to have been the listeners and recipients to G's last testimony. They committed to living a much more righteous lifestyle and doing exactly what G said, find God. Now you may think that this would be a good ending to the story, but it gets better.
A little less than a week after the incident that killed G, Elder Michie and I were found again driving through Fort Wayne after being cancelled on again for an appointment. Our back up plans had failed quickly behind the appointment and we were left to use our creativity and imagination on what to do next. Knowing the city quite well by that point I told Elder Michie that we might as well just do some light tracting until our next appointment that would be only about an hour away. So we headed to a completely random street that I pointed to and went with the intention on talking to the first person we could see. We parked the car and began walking the street with our eyes wide open. Surprising to me was to see that the first person we saw was a 19-20 year old guy out watering his front yard plants. It was surprising because he seemed to be doing it for the fun of it and I don't know about you but I don't know very many 19-20 year old ambitious gardeners haha. But, we approached him and inquired of him what his faith was. He said he was Muslim and had no Christian ties and so he wouldnt be interested. Well, being the persistent missionaries that we were I asked him if he could teach us then a little about his faith and then maybe we could find out how our faiths related. We had a good short discussion on this and then the young man made the comment "Well I'm not the person that knows a lot about my faith in my family though. My dad is much more into it" And so we quickly inquired if we could meet his dad. What he said then stunned us. He said "Well, now might not be the best time to talk to him. He just went through a very hard time. He works at a construction yard and there was an accident recently in which my dad was carrying a load in his machine and it accidently fell on a guy and killed him. My dad is way depressed about it" My companion and I looked at each other with very wide eyes of amazement. Was this the same guy that had accidently killed G??? I quickly demanded of the young man that he get is dad so we could talk to him. He reluctantly complied and his dad also was very reluctant to come out to speak with us. We promised him as he came out that he would not be disappointed about what he was about to hear. I told him that we knew exactly what had happened at his work the other day and that we wanted to tell him the great blessing that had happened from it. Keep in mind that this man was extremely depressed, to the point in which I thought he might have taken his own life had he enough guts to convince himself of it. His personal guilt level was extremely obvious. I rehearsed to the man the story of B and J and what had happened the morning before G had gone to work. I told him that because of all that had happened that day, B and J were more faithful to God than they had ever been in their entire lives. I continued to say that although we may not have the same beliefs about God or diety or the purpose of life, the miracle is still the same and either way, these two people are now brought closer to God. Truly God works in mysterious ways to save His own children. It seemed like this conversation gave that man much to ponder on but it was obvious he was still not completely comforted by it. I don't blame him at all, but I think there was finally some flicker of hope added back into his heart. His life may have been saved that day from depression and whatever act he may have done in his remorse.
Let's consider the chances of this happening. What are the chances that we happened to know B and J in this trying point in their lives? What's the chance that we happened to come by at the right time to find out about this event and J trusting us enough to tell us about it? What are the chances that in a few days our appointments just happened to fall through so that we'd have to make the choice to go tracting somewhere? What are the chances that we happened to pick that one street on that certain day when that certain man would be home and that his son would be first person we tracted into? What are the chances that we would know exactly what to say so that we'd be able to get to meet that boys dad and offer that comfort? In a city of hundreds of thousands of people, I'd say that all of these chances are extremely slim, down to the point of being practically zero. I feel blessed myself to have been used by the Lord in this way and to have been even just trusted the Lord for a task like that. I wish I knew what happened to that man but I will simply trust that if God could get my companion and I there like that, he could certainly take care of that man the rest of the way too. Never underestimate the abilities of God.
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