Tell What He’s Done for You

Many Mercies

Recently our congregation had an experience where many of the Lord’s temporal mercies were displayed to us, and we want to relate at least some of it to the glory of God and the encouragement of His children.

A young married couple living in Canada had determined, for the sake of spiritual fellowship, to move here to be near the saints. The young brother is a Canadian citizen, and it took considerable heavenly-inspired courage and self-sacrifice to leave familiar surroundings and seek to emigrate to a new land, even though he had spent much time here over the years and his wife is from here. Besides the normal challenges involved in moving to a new home, there were the complications of unfamiliarity with “the way things work” under a different governmental structure and culture, the long, tortuous process of applying for a resident visa, how to move a household across international boundaries, and the difficult decision of how to go about finding work here, particularly in the throes of a severe economic downturn. For various reasons, spiritual and temporal, he quit his job there without any prospects yet here, trusting God to help him find work soon enough after moving here to meet his family’s needs. There is a great deal that could be shared about the helps the Lord gave through the process of applying (and waiting) for a visa that would allow him to work in the US, and other mercies the Lord showed in preparing them to move, but we will report on some of the mercies the Lord gave in the moving process itself, and in seeking work here.

At the time of the move, there were five adults, each driving a vehicle, and one child. One of the vehicles was an RV, and three vehicles were towing trailers. It was important for the caravan to proceed together through customs at the border, with a written list of the contents of each vehicle and trailer.

Their original hopes were to get to the border by 8 a.m., to avoid congestion at the border and get an early start on an almost 400 mile journey, avoiding rush hour traffic in Seattle and Portland.

Before the caravan had gone five miles, one vehicle and trailer got separated from the others. The driver did not have with him the cell phone number to contact the others, but he had left his cell phone number with one of the others just that morning. Just as they were separated, a tire on another trailer blew out, forcing the caravan to stop. At this point they noticed the absence and made contact and got reunited, as well as rearranging the load from one of the trailers which was turning out to be overloaded. What a mercy the absence was discovered before they were all waiting in line at the border crossing!

At the border crossing, the Canadian brother who was moving was informed that there was a bunch of paperwork that he needed to have with him to import his vehicle into the U.S., and he was taken into the office. It looked like he would be required to go back alone, obtain information from the manufacturer of his vehicle, and then return and try again. The saints were praying, and after 45 minutes or so the border officials, having done the research themselves on the vehicle, approved the vehicle for importing and let him go on!

By this time it was past 3 in the afternoon, and a sister driving one of the vehicles had a severe headache. There were still 350 miles to go, and rush hour in Seattle to face with all these heavily loaded vehicles to manage, and no extra drivers. They called for prayer, then stopped to rest for a couple of hours at a rest area. While most of them, including the sick sister, were resting in their vehicles, a brother who was resting outside by a tree had an unusual experience. A truck driver approached him hesitantly, seeming to need several attempts to get up the nerve to talk to him. He said to the brother that he hadn’t had an experience like this before, but felt that there was perhaps someone sick among their group that he was supposed to pray for. The brother explained about the sister with the headache, and the truck driver, being hesitant to disturb her in her rest, said he would go pray for her in his truck. After a little while passed, he drove off. The sister reported later to having begun to feel considerably better about that time, and able to rest better. When they resumed traveling, they were now late enough to avoid the rush hour traffic as well.

The driver following this sister (who was driving the RV) noticed several times during the evening near side-swipes and collisions between the RV and tractor-trailer rigs passing by. He recalls quite a few times of being in earnest prayer, including one time when a truck slammed on his brakes, narrowly averting a collision. God’s protection was very strongly evident!

The caravan arrived safely here after midnight, and the sick sister felt better after hours of fatiguing driving than when she left the rest area! Surely God was merciful and gracious!

Just after the trip, another of the Lord’s mercies was discovered. A new battery that had been put in the RV turned out to be a little too small, and the clamps had not properly held it in place. In the vibrations of traveling, the battery had moved and turned so that an engine belt pulley was constantly rubbing against it. The side of the battery where the belt rubbed was worn paper thin—if it had burst open during the trip, corrosive battery acid would have spilled over belts and hoses in the engine compartment, but in the Lord’s “just in time” plan, the wall held out and was discovered just in time.

I need to mention at this point that the weather had been quite wet, both in their starting point and their destination, for several weeks, but a dry spell began just before they needed to start loading up their vehicles, and continued until all the unloading into the house had been completed the evening after they returned. Then it rained harder than it had for several months!

So God graciously intervened on behalf of this move in many ways. But now the young brother was unemployed, and needing to find work to support his family and pay bills. He had moved to a state with the second highest unemployment rate in the whole country, and with the worst economic times in a generation! We all were looking to the Lord for mercy, and the Lord showed himself strong on our behalf. After about two weeks of searching, he was hired out of fifty applicants for a position with a locally based family-owned trucking company!

We present this testimony in thanksgiving to the Lord, and for His glory and the encouragement of His children.