Answered Prayer for a Tomato: A Miracle Story

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 the miracle tomato. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Ann Browning. My husband Michael and I had been posted to Pitcairn Island, and we arrived. It was an adventure getting there, I must confess. And when we arrived, the house had— the pastor's house had been empty for a long, long time. It was the dry season, so there was very little fresh food around. I did find parsley in the garden. I did see some passion fruit. Bananas were available, and we could find the odd pumpkin in the bush, but there wasn't much else in fresh food. They had a little shop on the island, and so it had some very basics. We were able to buy soy milk and just a few products. And when the ships went by, the local people used to swap or trade fish. They'd catch fish for potatoes and onions and eggs and things like that. So I was able to buy some of that, but there wasn't much else. And so we were there for quite a few weeks, and I was craving fresh food. I was craving a tomato. And so I began to pray, and I said, Lord, I'm hungry for a tomato. I don't care how small it is. I'd just like a little tomato. And it was through the week, I was praying this every day, and I'd mentioned to a couple of people, that I was praying for a tomato, and they said, oh, you won't have any luck. This is not a good time for tomatoes. So I just kept praying. And I said, I'd love a tomato for Sabbath. Sabbath came, no tomatoes. So I just kept praying and trusting that God would provide what I need, what I was desiring actually, in His own good time. Now, in every house in Pitcairn, there was a ship's radio that was our communication system between all the houses. So you would turn it on like a ship's radio and speak to people, but it was on all the time because it was there for emergencies as well. So very, very early Sunday morning, I heard the radio come on and it was the captain of a tourist vessel that was due to come into Pitcairn the next that day. And the captain was speaking to the mayor of the, of the island. And he said to him, could you guys get enough fish to do a fish fry? And we'll bring some bread and we'd like a fish fry. And everybody is invited to come and have a meal. So they set up the square and all the Pitcairn Island people went off fishing so that they could set up this fish fry for the passengers. And so we got called up, everybody on the island got called up at late morning to have lunch with all of the tourists. So I began to walk up towards the town square, or the village square if you'd like, and there's a boardwalk, and I was walking up the boardwalk, and suddenly some of the women started calling out, Ann, God's answered your prayer for the tomato. And I said, how come? They said, come and see, come and see. So I went pretty hurriedly up towards the town square and I could not believe my eyes. The captain of the ship had arranged for the bread rolls, the sliced tomato, sliced cucumber, grated carrot, coleslaw, beetroot, a whole smorgasbord of salad vegetables for the whole, whole of Pitcairn Island. Wow. community. And the people were saying to me, and God didn't just answer your prayer for you to get a tomato, he answered your prayer for all of us to get a tomato, plus a whole smorgasbord of other salad goods. What an amazing God to do that. So everybody were able to have a salad because I prayed for a tomato and I had no idea that this ship was going to come. And provide that whole big smorgasbord of salad food. It just tells me that it pays to trust God. Be patient, and God sometimes does amazing surprises for us.