Nr.58 ended with: “The next Sunday we planned to tell the congregation about this, but driving to church that Sunday morning we had a car accident……!”

After a long dry period, it had rained that morning. There must have been some oil or something else that had made the road slippery, for all at once as I was passing a car ahead of us, our car swerved around and slid backwards into a shallow ditch ending up against a farmer’s wire fence. It was an absolute miracle that we had not hit another vehicle or horse and buggy as we were in Mennonite country with lots of buggy’s on the road. And there were cars going both ways, yet we missed them all and no one was hurt. We got out of the car and saw that a back tire had blown and was flat, that had made us swerve. The car was not damaged except for scratches from the fence. People helped us push the car back on the road; we changed tires and went on to church, where I requested to sing the hymn, “A thousand, a thousand thanksgivings.” Strange that this happened on the morning that we were going to announce our plans to go as missionaries to Europe. Was it another attempt of the enemy to try to stop us? The Bible teaches that we are in a spiritual battle, even as the Lord Jesus Himself was attacked by Satan before He began His ministry.

I had been holding evangelistic meetings in different places, including the, if I may say so, “famous Moorefield meetings” with hundreds of people attending. Even now, more than 40 years later I still meet people who talk about these meetings. Children also came along and Marina would take them aside in a separate room and play her accordion, sing with them and teach them Bible stories. A number of people and children accepted the Lord and quite a number received assurance of salvation, it was a great time of blessing and a moving of the Holy Spirit, a foretaste of what later would happen in Belgium. Yet at the same I was not satisfied with what was happening and something was bothering me……! (See: Musings)