July 10, 2011

Have you any faith promoting experiences (receiving answers to prayers, meeting church leaders and so on)?

I have many of them but the two I usually tell comes from Timberline experiences.

The first is about an instruction from the Lord.

At Timberline there are several times during the week when we have activities out in a large clear area. We would play games such as Capture the Flag. It was during one such event that I had the boys all out on the field near the top of Bristlecone Camp ground. It was near the edge of the cliffs that ran along the back side of the camp. I could hear the thunder coming from an approaching storm which couldn’t be seen due to the mountain behind us as well. I was listening to the thunder come closer when I had a distinct impression to move the boys from that clear area of the camp to a tent located a couple hundred yards further away from the cliffs. It was almost as though a voice had spoken it to me to move them to the tent. Well I yelled to the Senior Patrol Leader to move the boys but he didn’t hear me. The voice impression came stronger a second time so I yelled in such a way that he couldn’t help but hear me. We then all ran to the tent and the rain started to come down so I asked him to get the sides of the tent rolled down and the staff then began to drop the sides. I was helping and standing in such a way that the view of where we had just come from was in my side field of vision. We had barely started to drop the sides when lightening hit the field where we had just been playing. I then knew why I had been instructed to get the boys to the tent. I am sure someone could have been hit had I not heeded the warning. My assistant scoutmasters were worried and ran down the hill from camp since they had seen the strike as well and knew we were suppose to be down there. They were so glad to not find us there and knew the same thing that I did that someone would have been hit had we still been there. As I later thought about it I thought about the Bristlecone Pines from which the camp had been named that line those cliffs and how they have been hit many times through their lives. Lightening strikes along that area was a very common thing. I knew the Lord had been watching out for us that day.

The second is about bothering the Lord.

I was again the Scoutmaster at a Timberline course at Bristlecone Scout Camp. It was a week where we had been blessed with a lot of rain on one day. It had rained with such intensity that one of the patrols had been getting their lessons from the counselor in an outhouse by their camp. I can’t imagine how they must have suffered and have often wondered how much they learned from those lessons. It was also so wet that we decided to have a fire building contest just to see if anyone could build a fire when the wet seemed to be all wet. (The winning patrol did it in just under a minute.) It was also Thursday, the day when we traditionally would hold our Mountain Top Experience. So many of the plans had been changed that day due to the rain that I finally started to pray so that the rain would stop for our Mt Top experience and Flag retiring that followed it.

I must have said the prayer in my mind a hundred times even up to the point when we assembled on the flag assembly field to begin the event. I then had the thought “Quit bothering the Lord, He will stop the rain when it is time.” So I quit and began to pay more attention to the event and giving instruction for the evening. We then began to hike to the top of the mountain and it was still raining but a few hundred yards into the hike as we went along side a cliff where we could see down over Price the rain stopped and a most beautiful rainbow then came into view as the sun broke through the clouds which had been raining on us. I then thanked my Heavenly Father for his blessing. We got to the top of the mountain and the wind was now blowing very hard. Duaine Williams began his presentation of the Title of Liberty and the wind was blowing so hard that he was really having to hang onto the flag which he was using  on the flag pole. I then thought “Thank You Heavenly Father for stopping the rain, now if the wind would just stop.” The wind stopped so suddenly and completely that Duaine was shocked and lost his train of thought as he stared at the flag limp against the side of the pole. I then thought “OK Heavenly Father I know who is really in charge of this camp and it isn’t me”. The wind then again with the same intensity as before but I knew the Lord was watching over my camp.