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Protection
The Miracle Baby
Kissimmee, Fla.—The tornado lifted Jonathan Waldick, only 18 months old, from his bed. It carried him 50 feet. It injected him into a five-foot-high clump of debris that corkscrewed itself into the splintered trunk of an oak tree.
And there, after a frantic, 30-minute search, Jonathan was found, only one foot visible but wiggling with life. There he was found, still cocooned in his Perfect Sleeper mattress, still resting on his purple striped sheet.
This week’s vicious tornadoes carried another 18-month-old toddler out of his father’s arms and to his death. But Jonathan emerged from his vault of debris with two scratches on his scalp and two tiny welts on his chin.
Relatives and friends call Jonathan Waldick “The Miracle Baby.” They call the event “The Miracle at 1400 Fair Oaks.”
Jonathan is 3 feet tall. He weighs 40 pounds. He has hazel eyes and sandy brown hair.
Here’s his story, told largely by his guardian:
Jonathan and his 4-year old sister, Destiny, lived with Shirley Driver at 1400 Fair Oaks Ave., a block outside the Kissimmee city limits. Driver, 68, is their great-grandmother. She is raising them because of family problems.
Soon after bedtime Sunday night, the tornadoes arrived. Destiny and Driver were asleep in one bedroom of the wood-frame house. Jonathan was alone in another bedroom.
Driver: “I heard the wind roar. We just got slammed. I knew it was a tornado. I grabbed Destiny. The walls were going. The roof came off.
“Destiny said, ‘Grandma, you’re holding me too tight,’ but I couldn’t let go.”
The tornado did its work and passed, though the wind still howled and rain still came in great blustery torrents. Driver stood amid her crumbled house. She still held Destiny very, very tightly.
But the other child was missing, blown away. Young Jonathan, lost in the havoc.
“I’ve got to find Jonathan,” Driver howled, mostly to the wind. “I’ve got to find Jonathan.
“Somebody help me.”
A few neighbors arrived, including Steven Vernelson.
Driver: “I looked. Lord, I looked for Jonathan. I didn’t care if I cut my foot. As long as I found him, I didn’t care. But I couldn’t find him.
“Finally, Steven saw just this little foot, over there by the tree. We saw him all folded up in the mattress like in a cocoon. He didn’t move. We thought he was dead.
“Then, he wiggled his foot.
“He’s alive. He’s alive.”
Driver spent the night in the hospital. Heart palpitations. Jonathan was fine.
“He had a magic carpet ride and never knew it,” said Delbert Gassert, Jonathan’s uncle.
On Tuesday afternoon, Driver returned to her homesite for the first time since the storm. She saw devastation, nothing recognizable as a house. She saw the spot where Jonathan was found.
Arriving in a relative’s van, she reached over and grabbed the hand of her sister, Janice Gassert, who lives nearby.
“Oh, my gosh,” Driver said, and her eyes watered. “Jonathan lived through that.”
Other relatives and even some strangers also made pilgrimages to visit the site.
The mattress and the sheet were still there, against the tree trunk, nearly invisible, deep within the mound of wallboard and furniture and tree limbs and a wrecked Ford Thunderbird.
That anyone could be injected so deeply into this seemed astonishing.
“I think God has something planned for this boy,” Janice Gassert said. “I really believe there’s a special plan.”
A few feet away, one of Driver’s old phonograph records sat atop the wreckage, left there by the wind. It was a recording by the Raker Evangelistic Party, a gospel group.
The first song on the album was called, “Oh Lord, You’ve Been So Good To Me.”
Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA, February 25, 1998
Resource
- Charismatic Chaos, J. MacArthur, Jr, Zondervan, 1992, pp. 106ff
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Training Young Braves
The early American Indians had a unique practice of training young braves. On the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, after learning hunting, scouting, and fishing skills, he was put to one final test. He was placed in a dense forest to spend the entire night alone. Until then, he had never been away from the security of the family and the tribe. But on this night, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away. When he took off the blindfold, he was in the middle of a thick woods and he was terrified! Every time a twig snapped, he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce. After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest. Looking around, the boy saw flowers, trees, and the outline of the path. Then, to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet away, armed with a bow and arrow. It was his father. He had been there all night long. Our Daily Bread, October 1
Source Unknown
Ira Sankey
It was Christmas Eve 1875 and Ira Sankey was traveling on a Delaware River steamboat when he was recognized by some of the passangers. His picture had been in the newspaper because he was the song leader for the famous evangelist D.L. Moody. They asked him to sing one of his own hymns, but Sankey demurred, saying that he preferred to sing William B. Bradbury’s Hymn, “Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.” As he sang, one of the stanzas began, “We are Thine; do Thou befriend us. Be the Guardian of our way.”
When he finished, a man stepped from the shadows and asked, “Did you ever serve in the Union Army?” “Yes,” Mr. Sankey answered, “in the spring of 1860.” Can you remember if you were doing picket duty on a bright, moonlit night in 1862?” “Yes,” Mr. Sankey answered, very much surprised. “So did I, but I was serving in the Confederate army. When I saw you standing at your post, I thought to myself, ‘That fellow will never get away alive.’ I raised my musket and took aim. I was standing in the shadow, completely concealed, while the full light of the moon was falling upon you. At that instant, just as a moment ago, you raised your eyes to heaven and began to sing…’Let him sing his song to the end,’ I said to myself, ‘I can shoot him afterwards. He’s my victim at all events, and my bullet cannot miss him.’ But the song you sang then was the song you sang just now. I heard the words perfectly: ‘We are Thine; do Thou befriend us. Be the Guardian of our way.’ Those words stirred up many memories. I began to think of my childhood and my God-fearing mother. She had many times sung that song to me. When you had finished your song, it was impossible for me to take aim again. I thought, ‘The Lord who is able to save that man from certain death must surely be great and mighty.’ And my arm of its own accord dropped limp at my side.”
Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome, K Hughes, Tyndale, 1988, p. 69
Protection from a Snake
Lorrie Anderson, missionary to the head-shrinking Candoshi Shapra Indians of Peru, was looking for a quiet place for her daily time of Bible reading and prayer, so she went down by the edge of the river. After reading the Bible, she took up her prayer list. Eyes closed, she did not see the deadly anaconda weaving through the water until it struck, burying its fangs into her flesh. It withdrew to strike, hitting her arm again and again as it held her, screaming, in its coils. It reared up for the death blows. Then suddenly the giant snake, never known to release its prey, relaxed its grip and slithered off through the water. While Lorrie was being treated, a witch doctor from a nearby village burst into the hut and stared at her. She couldn’t believe Lorrie had survived. She said her son-in-law, also a witch doctor, had chanted to the spirit of the anaconda that morning and sent it to kill the young missionary. “I’m certain,” Lorrie said, “that except for the protection of God, it would have worked.”
Our Daily Bread, August 13, 1990
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