Episode Transcript
It's all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of a wife's prayer for female company. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century.
I'm Dr. John Ashton, my wife and I live in the eastern side of New South Wales. But we love exploring Australia and one time we decided to take our four wheel drive vehicle, our old four wheel drive vehicle and explore the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
It's a very beautiful but very remote region of Australia and we were in the area and we were planning to. Well, we'd driven up the west coast of Western Australia driving along and I can remember as we talked along my wife said to me, you know, I really love to have some female company, I'm just missing having some girl talk with another lady. And I said to her, I said, well why don't we pray about it? And so we prayed that somehow my wife would have the opportunity to be able to have some talk time with some female company rather than just me, her husband in the car.
And we decided to do a trip to Mitchell Falls, famous waterfall up in the, in the Kimberleys that is accessed by a very remote road. And I think we'd pulled into the Edwards river campsite, quite a delightful campsite on the side of the Edwards river. And we were going to leave our camping gear there, our tent there and do the drive up to Mitchell Falls which was a very, very rough road.
We're leading our tyres right down. And there were a number of other campers of course there, all in their four wheel drive vehicles. There was a four wheel drive tag along team there, that's where a number of four wheel drives follow a more experienced leading four wheel drive vehicle.
And just then a lady drove in in a very small SUV and she was by herself. Now most people were either couples or maybe you might get a male by himself but it was seeing a female by herself was quite unusual. This lady hopped out and began putting up a little tent and she had a little dog with her and my wife saw her and said, oh she looks like an interesting lady, I'd like to go down and talk to her.
So my wife went down and chatted to her and she came back with a. My wife came back then with a request and she explained that this lady was delivering the census forms to the remote communities in the Kimberley region and she'd been informed by the leader, one of the men leading the tag along tour that her vehicle wouldn't be able to get through Some of the rugged river and creek crossings on the route to Mitchell Falls and the Mitchell Plateau where there are number of eco resort things and so forth that she needed to get to and the helicopter base and so forth. And so she was giving up, she was going to then turn around and go back.
And so my wife said, she said well, could she come with us in our vehicle? And I said sure. So the lady was so excited about that and the next morning she brought up her bags with the census forms in them and a map of the places where she needed to call into along the way. And we're about to set off in the morning and of course in the morning my wife and I would have prayer in our car together for safe travelling with no breakdowns and so forth.
And I thought to myself will I say a prayer or not? And I thought well if the person is offended by me saying a prayer, well she doesn't have to come with us, you know. And so I, we were about to start off and I said to her, look, hope you don't mind, I said, but we're Christians and we, we will say a prayer to God before we set off on our trip. And so we bowed, my wife and I bowed our heads and I said a little prayer and the lady said, you know, beaming and said, but I'm a Christian too.
And it turned out that she hadn't been long a Christian and she and her husband had bought a bookshop in the town of Kununurra and had converted half of it into, into some Christian to carry Christian books. But my wife and her, I think, I don't think they saw much scenery, they just talked continuously the whole time. It was a full day.
We got back well after dark. But we, my wife and I also got a blessing in that we were able to go into a lot of areas and regions where there was no ad, into the different echo resorts and so forth. So we got to see some of the extra parts of the Kimberley's that the normal tourists only the paying tourists would see.
So that was a real blessing and we became friends with that young lady. So always remember that spectacular way that God answered my wife's prayer for female company that developed into a friendship. Praise the Lord.
I'm Dr. John Ashton.
