So two days ago, end of post, I gave a few details regarding Wesley's medical center bill, which was due yesterday. I let Wes know about it so he could pray for a miracle for us. And I let the college kids know too, as they like to let us know how expensive college and "adulting" is, so I wanted to let them know I feel their pain. It was due Aug 29th, so I called yesterday to get us set up on a payment plan at the end of the day, but with the time difference, they were closed. So I got online to pay it, I paid the minimum due, $189, which was the amount a lady told me last week if we got on a 24 month plan. So I paid $189 on the due date, trusting that they'd be cool with that if I called them first thing the next day, aka today. BUT, as I was on their website last night, there was a number to call if you needed financial assistance. Yes please. So I wrote down that number and thought I'd give them a call first today. I did, and talked to a lady named Sheri, and I was praying in my heart for help, cause we really don't have $4500 to put towards this, and so I told her our situation as I understood it - that our son is there in Texas on a mission for our church, our insurance here in Utah doesn't cover out there, we were told it would be $700, then got this $4500 bill out of the blue, etc etc. She sounded sympathetic, and asked for our account number and a few other things, the total amount billed, how much we've paid so far, then said she'd call me back. She did call back like an hour later, asking for a few more things - the date of his surgery and how much we paid that day, I told her, she said "Ok, I'll call you back" and I didn't know what power this little lady might have, but I was praying for her to work a miracle and THEN GUESS WHAT?!?! Sheri, the miracle lady, called me back around 5:30 as I was trying to get ready to go out with Corey. The kids were around me but I knew it was her calling and I tried to be in a quiet spot, I knew it was at the end of the work day for her there in Texas, so this would prob be the last call for today, and she just said that what we were told when he went in for his surgery, that the $700 payment was all we needed to pay, was indeed correct, things just got entered wrong in the system, and that "the balance was taken care of." Like WHAT?!?!? The $4500 is taken care of?!?! Oh thank you thank you Sheri lady! I felt like Enos "Lord, how is it done??" Like, I wanted to ask her "Wait, what??? How?!?!?" Did she have access to a special charity fund that she used to cover it? Is she a member of the church and somehow got us help that way? Did she pay for it? It's really just "taken care of?" Thousands of dollars just forgiven? My mind was racing with questions of HOW, but my mouth just said "Thank you SO MUCH" and I truly am so grateful, this was a miracle today. Thank you Sheri! And I've also been thinking today of our redemption from death, sin and hell. Jesus paid a debt much larger than $4500 for my soul, for each of us. He's taken care of it. I am feeling very grateful for this small temporal redemption today.
I also will share a nightmare I had last night/early this morning. I was in some cabin camping with Peter and Katharine, but I was in the cabin and Peter and Katharine were outside in a tent by themselves for some reason, and I woke up in the cabin and I heard a noise out there, wondering how it hadn't woken me up, and it was two grizzly bears and they had eaten Peter and Katharine. I was totally bawling, I screamed and ran towards them to get them to stop, but they growled at me like they'd kill me too, so then I turned and ran the other way sobbing, so sad that this was real and that I wasn't dreaming. Katharine's little legs were dangling with her shoes on from an umbrella stroller, with her body gone. It was horrible. And when I did wake up I was SO GLAD it was a dream, and I thought "that sucked" and there was no way I was going back to bed and risk dreaming any of that again, so I went down to read the Book of Mormon, and luckily I found something that immediately got my mind onto something else. SO, I've been doing a little thing the past few montsh, where when it says "14th year of the reign of the judges" I've been putting that as 2014. And I've been writing the modern "date" equivalent in the top corner of each page, so I can try to understand better the timing of the different events in Alma. SO - some of the things that go along with this little date game I'm playing - if the reign of the judges was the year 2000, that puts King Benjamin's reign ending in 1964, and that's when King Mosiah's begins. He reigns from 1964 - 2000! For 36 years! Wow. Captain Moroni (Alma 43:17) was 25 in the 18th year / 2018, so that means he was born in "1993" - 98 years BC. The title of Liberty was 2019, and that is also when Amalakiah (Alma 46:3) enters the story Jan 2019 (Alma 45:20), and does all his fraud and wicked crap killing Lehonti (Alma 47:18) and the King of the Lamanites (Alma 47:24) in that same 19th year (Alma 48:2)... Like that is amazing. How does one guy go from running away from his own nation and people, to being the king over a whole different people in the space of one year? Amalakiah must have been a very powerful and charismatic figure. Anyway, that's the kind of fun stuff I've been doing in Alma, and this morning, after my horrible nightmare, I was reading and jumped ahead to when the sign of the Lord's birth was given, and the 91st year had passed away (3 Nephi 1:1) so it was in the 92nd year, so 2092 for pretend, and it says that it was 600 years since Lehi left Jerusalem (3 Nephi 2:6), and so to continue my game of likening the timeline unto today, what is 2092 minus 600??? You get 1492, which was when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It's that cool?!?! Captain Moroni's time to Lehi's time is like us today and Christopher Columbus. So that was so fun! I was excited, and shared that with all my kids. Again, I was grateful that it got my mind off of my bad dream, and it was really fun to study. I was grateful for that, I'm grateful Peter and Katharine are still alive and well, and I'm so grateful too for Sheri at the Financial Assistance hotline for the Hendrick Medical Center for being an instrument in God's hands working a miracle for us in getting that $4500 bill waived. God did a miracle for us today.
Peter's bracelet that says "Peter heart Wes". I'm grateful Peter is alive and well, and grateful that Wesley's medical center bill was taken care of. Thank you Lord!