A few months ago, I started reading a book \u201cGod\u2019s Smuggler\u201d by Brother Andrew.\u00a0 I had heard of this book before and decided it was worth a read. This story is an excerpt of one of the many miracles that happened on his Service mission for the Lord.\u00a0 This book is FULL of miracles, it was hard to pick out just one.<\/p>
The roads in Yugoslavia were extraordinarily hard on cars. When we weren\u2019t climbing fierce mountain trails, we were fording streams at the bottom of steep valleys.<\/em><\/p>\n\n But the worst threat to the little VW was the dust. Dust lay over the unpaved roads like a shroud; it sifted in on us even through the closed windows, and I hated to think what it was doing to the engine. Every morning in our Quiet Time, Nikola and I would include a prayer for the car. \u201cLord, we don\u2019t have either time or the money for repairs on the car, so will You please keep it running?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n One of the peculiarities of travel in Yugoslavia in 1957 was the friendly road-stoppings that took place. Cars, especially foreign cars, were still such a rarity that when two drivers passed each other, they almost always stopped to exchange a few words about road conditions, weather, gasoline supplies, bridges. One day we were dusting along a mountain road when up ahead we spotted a small truck coming toward us. As it pulled alongside, we also stopped. \u201cHello,\u201d said the driver. \u201cI believe I know who you are. You\u2019re the Dutch missionary who is going to preach in Terna tonight.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cAnd this is the Miracle Car?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cThe Miracle Car?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cI mean the car that you pray for each morning.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n I had to laugh. I had mentioned the prayer in a previous meeting; the word had obviously gone on ahead. \u201cYes,\u201d I admitted, \u201cthis is the car.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cMind if I take a look at her? I\u2019m a mechanic\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cI\u2019d appreciate it.\u201d I had put gasoline in that engine, and that was literally all since I had crossed the border. The mechanic went around to the rear and lifted the hood over the motor. For a long time he stood there, just staring. \u201cBrother Andrew,\u201d he said at last, \u201cI have just become a believer. It is mechanically impossible for this engine to run. Look. The air filter. The carburetor. The sparks. No, I\u2019m sorry. This car cannot run.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n \u201cAnd yet it\u2019s taken us thousands of miles.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n The mechanic only shook his head. \u201cBrother,\u201d he said, \u201cwould you permit me to clean your engine for you and give you a change of oil? It hurts me to see you abuse a miracle.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n Gratefully we followed the man to his village a few miles from Terna.\u00a0 We pulled behind him into a little courtyard filled with pigs and geese.\u00a0 That night while we preached he took the engine apart, cleaned it piece by piece, changed the oil, and by the time we were ready to leave the next morning, presented us with a grinning new automobile.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n\n God had answered our prayer.<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago, I started reading a book \u201cGod\u2019s Smuggler\u201d by Brother Andrew.\u00a0 I had heard of this book before and decided it was worth a read. This story is an excerpt of one of the many miracles that happened on his Service mission for the Lord.\u00a0 This book is FULL of miracles, it was hard to pick out just one. The roads in Yugoslavia were extraordinarily hard on cars. When we weren\u2019t climbing fierce mountain trails, we were fording streams at the bottom of steep valleys. But the worst threat to the little VW was the dust. Dust lay over the unpaved roads like a shroud; it sifted in on us even through the closed windows, and I hated to think what it was doing to the engine. Every morning in our Quiet Time, Nikola and I would include a prayer for the car. \u201cLord, we don\u2019t have either time or the money for repairs on the car, so will You please keep it running?\u201d One of the peculiarities of travel in Yugoslavia in 1957 was the friendly road-stoppings that took place. Cars, especially foreign cars, were still such a rarity that when two drivers passed each other, they almost always stopped to exchange a few words about road conditions, weather, gasoline supplies, bridges. One day we were dusting along a mountain road when up ahead we spotted a small truck coming toward us. As it pulled alongside, we also stopped. \u201cHello,\u201d said the driver. \u201cI believe I know who you are. You\u2019re the Dutch missionary who is going to preach in Terna tonight.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d \u201cAnd this is the Miracle Car?\u201d \u201cThe Miracle Car?\u201d \u201cI mean the car that you pray for each morning.\u201d I had to laugh. I had mentioned the prayer in a previous meeting; the word had obviously gone on ahead. \u201cYes,\u201d I admitted, \u201cthis is the car.\u201d \u201cMind if I take a look at her? I\u2019m a mechanic\u201d \u201cI\u2019d appreciate it.\u201d I had put gasoline in that engine, and that was literally all since I had crossed the border. The mechanic went around to the rear and lifted the hood over the motor. For a long time he stood there, just staring. \u201cBrother Andrew,\u201d he said at last, \u201cI have just become a believer. It is mechanically impossible for this engine to run. Look. The air filter. The carburetor. The sparks. No, I\u2019m sorry. This car cannot run.\u201d \u201cAnd yet it\u2019s taken us thousands of miles.\u201d The mechanic only shook his head. \u201cBrother,\u201d he said, \u201cwould you permit me to clean your engine for you and give you a change of oil? It hurts me to see you abuse a miracle.\u201d Gratefully we followed the man to his village a few miles from Terna.\u00a0 We pulled behind him into a little courtyard filled with pigs and geese.\u00a0 That night while we preached he took the engine apart, cleaned it piece by piece, changed the oil, and by the time we were ready to leave the next morning, presented us with a grinning new automobile.\u00a0 God had answered our prayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43,44,42,40,41],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hope","tag-blessings","tag-fingerprints-of-god","tag-god","tag-hope","tag-miracles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebighopeletters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}