Nr.190 ended with, “Saturday night at 11.45 pm Marina felt miserable again and I took her blood pressure which was 83/33 (normal = 120/80) and her pulse 22 (normal = 70)……………!” (See richardandmarina.net).

Without hesitation, in the car, and to the hospital. I told the nurses about her blood pressure and heart rate. They immediately took her to the intensive care unit where they hooked her up to a monitor, gave her intravenous and kept checking her. A nurse told me to go home and get some rest, “your wife is in good hands.” The next day, Sunday morning, on my way to church to preach, I saw Marina and she told me that the night before an alarm had sounded and a nurse came running over. Marina saw that her heart beat on the monitor was just a little flicker. The nurse said she was going to get a doctor. Marina told her she was fine, in God’s hands and not worried as she was not afraid to die. She then passed out and woke up Sunday morning feeling better. She said she had no idea what they had done with her during the night, but she was not in heaven, but still in the intensive care unit. At church, I asked the Christians to pray for her. The next day a pacemaker was put in and soon she was much better. It had been a close call, I almost lost her, but the Lord had kept her and we praised Him.

We went back to our activities, but we both felt that we did not have the energy like before and started wondering and praying about our future. We felt the time might come that we may have to return to Canada, as we did not think it right for our home church and others who were supporting us, to continue, while we were not able to do what we used to do and that it would be better for our support to go to new and younger missionaries. We didn’t know what the future held, so we wondered about selling our house and renting another so that, if we had to all at once leave, we wouldn’t have the hassle of getting rid of our house then.

During the summer of 2005, on a Friday afternoon, we had a realtor come to discuss the matter with him. He was willing to sell our house and we told him the amount we wanted for it. He smiled and told us that we would never get that, seeing it was such an old house. He promised to be back on Monday morning to take pictures to put on his website, but Monday morning came and he did not show up, instead, a lady rang our doorbell. We had no idea that several miracles were about to happen……….! (Go to Musings).