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 the tsunami. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Ann Browning. I was born to missionary parents, and at the time of this story, we were posted to Honiara in the Solomon Islands. My dad was the president. He had a mission vessel, and part of his work was each year having to run district meetings or camp meetings, or collecting students, dropping off students, providing missionaries to different places, or even picking up supplies and dropping them off at different villages along the journey. We did correspondence as there was no school at that time for missionaries, kids, or even expat kids. So we would gather our correspondence lessons and go with him whenever we could. I remember this story very, very clearly. It's come to mind often in my life. My dad was a man of faith and prayer, and he passed that on to us, which I'm very grateful for. So we were on the mission boat and we were going out to an island. We were in the middle of the ocean. There wasn't a island island anywhere. And we were all in bed having a sleep. My dad always slept in his clothes. He never got into pajamas because the wheelhouse was just up the stairs from the top of his bed. And at night there were different crew people that would take different ships on the helm of the ship. But dad always slept with one ear open and I think one eye open just in case something went wrong. There was always a lookout right at the front of the ship. And so we all went to bed happily. My bed was the top bunk. My dad was underneath me. My mum was on the bottom bunk on the other side, and my brother was on the top bunk on the other side. So we were happily cruising along, heading to a new island. And during the night we heard some screaming. And the crew fellow that was on the helm was calling out to my dad to come quickly, come quickly. And so it woke us all up. And my dad rushed up the stairs and into the wheelhouse. And the problem was they could see the lookout guy at the front could see this huge wave coming towards the ship. So my dad had to turn the ship to climb the ship bow on. So we began the climb up this great huge tsunami. It was humongous. And everybody in the ship was. Was woken by this time. And everybody was praying where they were as we went up to the top. And we finally got to the top of this great big wave and we started to go down. And then the crewboy that was up the front, that was. The lookout started screaming again because there was a second tsunami wave. And so dad said he had to turn the ship to just go up that so that we wouldn't go on a side or a side beam climb on this wave. He had to go front on, otherwise the ship would have tipped over. As he was climbing this second one, he couldn't believe it. There was a third wave, but it was coming side on. So it was partway up this big tsunami wave and this other wave was coming side on. He didn't know what to do, so he called out to everyone, can you pray? Pray now, Pray, please. And so everybody began to really plead with God because Dad knew that this other tsunami could tip us over. And the wave hit us sideways as he's going up. And the ship began to list and it turned and it turned and it turned and it turned and we were side on to the water. I can never forget Pastor Louis was holding onto one of the posts on the side of the ship and he was saying, I can see the keel, I can see the keel. Everybody fell out of bed. Stuff fell out of the cupboards. And we just seemed to be suspended in that situation, not going further over and not coming back. And my dad was sideways holding onto the helm, trying to climb this other wave as well as this sideways wave. After what seemed like forever, the ship began to actually become upright again. It slowly came back to where it should have been. And then my dad was able to go over the top of the other wave and go straight ahead. It was the most terrifying experience because we knew that there'd been a different ship, a government ship that had disappeared into the ocean previous to this, and nothing was ever heard of them again. And so to get through that, you can imagine the prayer season we had after we got over that second wave. Everybody came out of their bedrooms. We weren't worried about the stuff all over the floor. We just went out to praise God that God had gotten us through that really frightening experience. And I just can't help but praise God because without his help, we would never have gotten out of that. We found out later that these tsunamis had come from an earthquake that had happened in Chile. And they come right across the Pacific island, I mean, sorry, the Pacific Ocean. And we had happened to be in the ocean when they came through. So I just thank God for his miracles, for answered prayer, and for his care for his people.
