| by Laura Lee (Bismarck, North Dakota) |
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| As a child, I never grew up in the church of God nor did I ever have contact with anyone who kept a Saturday Sabbath, at least not to my knowledge, so the true story I am about to tell you may change the way you look at those in other affiliations. Our family bounced from church to church, starting with the Congregational church which I believe changed into or split into the United Church of Christ, where I was sprinkled as a 5th grader. That church lit candles apparently and my mother thought it seemed too Catholic, so she moved us to the Lutheran church where the minister’s wife ran off with another man and due to that scandal, my mother moved us to the Methodist Church. At age 16 the Methodist Church sent me a bill for offering money, which I ripped up and mailed back to them. Even though my family generally always had a church affiliation of some sort we hardly ever attended. As I grew up, we also had the Jehovah’s Witnesses at our house several times and I had a girlfriend who was Mormon, so I attended sometimes with her. Our babysitter was Pentecostal (Assembly of God) and when I got married the first time it was in a Baptist Church. From the time I was in 3rd grade until I was 17 years old, I attended the Pentecostal Church the most. I even kept that one and the Baptist Church throughout most of my life until the early 90’s when I first learned about the Worldwide Church of God. As a very young child I always knew that the Sabbath was Saturday, but never to my knowledge, did I ever have contact with any Saturday Sabbath Keepers. When I asked my mother why if the Sabbath is Saturday, why do people keep Sunday, she got mad at me and that was the end of that conversation. Now that you realize that at the time these things happened, I was not a Saturday Sabbath Keeper of any sort and that I hardly ever attended any Sunday Keeping church either, perhaps this will help you to have more compassion for those who are not yet called, because their time will come and God will real them in, sometimes from the deepest sin infested life a person could be living. I know a lot about the sin infested world we live in today because I was a member of it until God called me and changed my entire life when I was in my late 30’s. In the mid 70’s I was on my way to pick my daughter up at daycare when I had an automobile accident. Many of you reading this are familiar with the Wis. Dells, WI area. I was born and raised in the Wis. Rapids, WI area and lived there until the late 80’s. That is about one hour north of Wis. Dells. Highway 13 goes north from Wis. Dells to Wis. Rapids. Back in the 70’s highway 13 in Wis. Rapids was a treacherous two-lane highway. There were a lot of accidents on that stretch of road in the Wis. Rapids area and I was one of its statistics. I had just left work to go pick up my daughter at daycare and was going south on highway 13. It was winter, and I missed my Church Ave. turn. I saw a driveway for a restaurant and went to turn in to turn around and found that the driveway was not plowed, and the ditch was deep, so I was stuck. I was on the opposite side of the road now and I could see a car coming fast in the lane I was now in, so I did not have any time to back up and get back into the lane I had been in. I figured that I was off on the shoulder of the road far enough and had my headlights on that surely the other car going north would see my car and go around me. Well, as it turned out, he cut my car in half and never broke a single window. My trunk was laying in the ditch several feet from the rest of my car. His car was a quarter mile down the road in the opposite ditch. Back in those days it seemed like everyone had CB radios in their cars and I was no exception. It took the police a half hour to forty-five minutes to get there, but I remember hearing everyone almost that went by calling this accident into the police channel while I listened. A man came to the window of my car and asked if I was okay. I said my leg hurt. I was holding down the break peddle so hard when the accident happened that my leg hurt from the stress. Otherwise, the guy who hit me and myself escaped with no injuries. The police understood what happened and I never did get a ticket for being in the wrong lane, however my insurance company did pay for the other guy’s car after nine months of trying to get out of it. Turns out we both had kids in the same daycare. Well, that could have been a worse accident than it was and what happened afterwards was something I kept my mouth shut about for years because who would believe me. The people in the world just don’t believe these kinds of stories, not for the most part. It was faster for me to go from work down highway 13 south to Church Ave. to pick up my daughter from daycare and so that is what I still planned to do, even after my car accident and I did. Shortly after my car accident, I was on my way to pick up my daughter at day care and I always had to stop at the stop sign for a four way stop on the edge of town, so I did and then my car would not go south on highway 13. All on its own, my car turned down county road Z and I had to take the back roads to go to the daycare center. Those back roads hardly ever have traffic on them except a car or two, but this day there were all kinds of cars going the opposite direction as I was. They were being detoured off highway 13 due to an accident. My daughter went to that day care for a couple of more years before and after she started school and, on any day, when there was an accident or about to be an accident on highway 13 my car always turned onto county trunk Z. So, we are talking about intervention from God which lasted for several years and happened to a person in the world, who was into the sin of the world. It was like a power was turning my steering wheel and I was totally unable to make that steering wheel go the way I wanted it to go. Once the car was going down highway Z I could drive it just fine and I always got to see all the detoured traffic coming towards me while I took those back roads to the daycare center. My angel sighting happened in the late 80’s as I was traveling Interstate 80 in Iowa on my way to Phoenix, Arizona. I am clipping along, and my service engine light came on. I had just bought the car I was driving in Phoenix and I didn’t want to wreck it, so I pulled over on the side of the interstate and got out and put my hood up to wait for the State Patrol or someone who would help. My car was pointed west and though I honked my horn at passersby, no one would stop to help me. I was looking east because the traffic going west on the side of the interstate, I was on was all coming from the east. Then I looked west and there was parked in front of my car a full-size semi-truck and trailer and one never passed me as I was looking east. There was no truck and then there was a truck. A man got out of the truck and he was dressed from head to foot in white. To this day I remember he was a man but even though I looked right at him I don’t know what his face looked like. He was a man of few words. He took one look under the hood of my car and said you broke a belt, he pointed and said you can go up there and get it fixed. I saw nothing up there due to a small hill, so he said follow me. I got into my car and followed his truck. He turned into a restaurant on the left and I turned right into the place where he said they would fix it for me. So far what makes this a strange story is that a full-size semi-truck and trailer had to have passed me as I am watching traffic going west on an interstate highway, and no semi passed me and yet here it was parked right in front of my car facing west. The driver was dressed in white from head to foot. My Dad and 3 of my brothers were all semi-truck drivers, my Dad since the 50’s, I grew up around trucks and truck drivers and I never in my life to that day or after have seen a single truck driver ever dress in white from head to foot. The story gets stranger. I saw the same truck driver that helped me, park his truck in the parking lot at the restaurant before I went into the gas station to see if they would fix my car. I went into the gas station and I explained to the guy that I had a broken belt and that I only had $30.00’s and I needed to have some of that money in order to eat. He said it would cost me $25.00’s. I had money in a bank in Phoenix, but my ATM card would not work in Iowa, but it would work when I got to Nebraska. So, I left my car and walked to the restaurant where the truck driver was. I wanted to thank him for helping me. His truck was still parked outside the restaurant, so I went into the restaurant where I saw a waitress wiping off tables. The restaurant looked very empty, so I asked her if a man had come in to eat. She said, no, no one has come in in quite some time. I practically ran to the door I had just entered and when I looked out the truck was gone but it wasn’t on the interstate either, which I could see for miles from where I was standing. That semi-truck, trailer and driver disappeared just as it had appeared. Through the years I have had other truck drivers help me when I broke down on the road, but I saw them come and go and they wore blue jeans or a uniform of some sort. If this trucker in Iowa wasn’t an angel, then who was he? And remember at this point in my life I still did not know about the Worldwide Church of God nor did I know any Saturday Sabbath Keepers to my knowledge. As I was getting ready to move from Fort Atkinson, WI to Bismarck, ND, I had just finished work for the day in Lake Mills, WI when I had a strange encounter. I had my own cleaning business in Wisconsin at the time and I was also now a Sabbath Keeper for approximately six years. I was tired after work and I just wanted to stop at the grocery store and go home. So, I went in got what I needed and went to checkout. I was in line behind one or two people and the cash register was working just fine. When it was my turn to check out, the cash register jammed and even though three different employees tried to get it to work, it would not. Then suddenly the cash register just started working again. The employees were surprised and had no idea why it quit working or why it started working again so suddenly. I left Lake Mills and continued to the intersection of highway 18 and stopped for the stop sign. There was a three-car pile-up that had just happened at that intersection. Two cars were in a farmer’s field a half a block from the intersection and another one was scattered on highway 18. The police were not yet there so I just missed this accident. I now knew why the cash register jammed and then started again so suddenly. These are the three that stick out most in my mind, but there have been numerous of these strange happenings throughout my life. To say that God doesn’t guide and help those who are still in their sin is not true. A person can be in the process of being called for many years before it happens. Everyone will get a chance at some point. I didn’t tell anyone about these things for many years in some cases as I felt no one would believe me and even then, I told few people until now. God is probably working with far more people than we can even imagine so always be ready to give an answer to those who ask, as you may be a part of their calling. A version of this article was printed by Dixon Cartwright in “The Journal: News of the Churches of God” under the title: “Motorist believes helpful truck driver was an angel”. |
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