Episode Transcript
It is all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Therefore I challenge this idea with my story of the chocolate fan road trip. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Many years ago when I was studying for a doctorate at the University of Tasmania I.
I got word that my mother was quite ill. A friend had rung me, contacted me and said John, can you come home and help your mum? I had a brother who was six years younger than me who was also living with my mum. My dad had died many years before and so I got permission from my supervisor to take some leave to go up and help my mum.
And I talked to my mum and she felt it'd be really good if she could come down to Tasmania and be with me for a while where I was there could keep an eye on her for a while through this time. Now as a full time postgraduate student, although I was on one of the top research fellowships in Australia I didn't have a lot of money to spare and I had a budget at the time this is in the early 1970s to buy a vehicle up to $200. Now back in those days the cars were advertised, the vehicles were advertised in the PA only didn't have the Internet and, and they had different categories so the lowest category were cars under $200.
And so I caught the, the plane on a Sunday morning up to Sydney from Hobart and I at the railway station I bought a Sydney Morning Herald which was where most of the vehicles in Sydney were advertised and went to the used car section. And the reason and I had a couple of things I had no way of getting around. So one of the things that I required was that the car for sale needed to be near a railway station so I could get this.
I was based at Central Station also I didn't want to buy from a car dealer as, as well and so I wanted a private sale vehicle. So I began going through down the paper looking for vehicles that seemed to be and I wanted to buy a little van because my mother wanted to bring some furniture with her and some personal items. We felt the best way to do this we couldn't afford to have them shipped down there was to buy a van.
I would drive my mum down in the van and she could bring the things with her that she wanted to bring. So I was looking for a little van under $200 and every time that I saw came down saw a vehicle that looked right description I prayed and I prayed that God would if it was not the right van that either the people wouldn't answer or it would be away from a railway station, that God would guide me to the right van. So every time I made a phone call, I prayed this specific prayer and I went down.
A lot of the times the phone didn't answer or the vehicle was nowhere near a railway station, or the vehicle was being sold by a car sales yard or something like that. And so I was going down through my list, going down through my list, going down through my list, I came to this particular van. I remember it was a Bedford van.
And I rang up and yes, it was near a railway station. Yes, the person could pick me up from the railway station. And so I was very excited about this and I caught the train out and the person said, I'll meet you there in a Ford Mustang car, Blue Ford Mustang car.
And I got off the train and walked down this blue Ford Mustang, pulled up with a man in a white shirt and tie, and I'd forgot to cheque. I realised I'd forgotten to cheque, whether it was a car yard. Sure enough, he was from Joe's Car Sales.
That wasn't the name, obviously. I can't remember the name. I was so disappointed.
I thought, well, I'm here now, I might as well go. And I went and had a look at this van and it was a. It had been a butcher's van.
It was all rusty on the inside. I went to try and drive it and the steering was so bad. And I can remember it was $195.
It was just under the $200. And I thought to myself, my mum's a vegetarian. This is no good.
I can't take my mum in this. It must be something. And I remember, I thought, okay, I know I'm here.
There must be a reason why I've made this mistake. I believe there was a reason. Why did God bring me here? But I didn't believe it was to buy this van.
And so I said to the car salesman, I said, no, I'm not going to take the van. Can you take me back to the railway station? He took me back to the railway station. There was a phone booth nearby and I thought to myself, hang on, I'm here now.
Maybe I should look for phone numbers that are similar to that other one because they'll be in this area. So I went down, went down, went down, went down. And there was another van advertised with a similar phone number.
And I rang the company up and they said, yes, we're actually a garage and this is vehicle that's been repaired, but the owner can't afford the repair so we're selling it. And I said, where are you? And they said, well, we're not very far away, just catch bus number such and such and we're the third stop from where you are. So I caught the bus and got out and you wouldn't believe it, it was a chocolate delivery van.
It was a Fiat van. It was all fully lined and insulated. It was a beautiful little van.
It was $100 there. And so I bought the van and drove up to. To get my.
Get my mum. So I thought that was a real answer to prayer. But we needed some tires, had four bald tires on it.
And so we went to a local tire place and as I pulled in and the guy came out and had a look and he said, well, it'll be such and such. It was going to be quite expensive to buy new tires and I really was exceeding my budget. But he said, look, we've just had a person come in with a new Valiant that want to put mag wheels on it.
We've got a set of four tyres which you can have for $20. And so we got four new tyres on our van for $20. So I packed my mother in the van and we prayed for safe travelling.
And we were travelling from Newcastle down to Melbourne to catch the ferry on the main highway. As we were passing through one of the outer suburbs of Sydney, I heard fop, fwop, fwop, fwop, fwop. I thought, oh, no, sounds like a flat tire.
And I pulled over onto the side of the road and sure enough, I had a flat tire. And I went round the back and undid the back compartment where the spare tire was in the van. I hadn't checked this, there was no spare wheel, no spare tire, what were we going to do? And remember this was well before mobile phones back in the early 70s.
And as I looked across the road, we'd got our flat tire in front of a tire dealer, a tire repair place. So I went across the road, the guy simply wheeled the jack across the road, jacked our car up, fixed the tyre and we're on our way. And we arrived down at the ferry.
But I only had enough money for a deck chair on the ferry. I didn't have enough money for a cabin. I'd kept some money extra.
So we had enough money to buy the fuel that we needed to continue our journey. And when we got on the boat, my mum was feeling really not well and she said, john, I can't sit up all night, please can you try and get a cabin? Now I hadn't booked a cabin and so I went to the Bursa and he said, well look, we are fully booked, but just come and see us after the boat has left. Come and see and if there's a cabin vacant, we'll let you have that.
Well, I did that after the boat left and it turned out there was somebody that didn't make it. There was a vacant cabin, two berth cabin. And I asked how much extra that was going to be and I still remember it was just $5.
It was five now, remember this back in 1970. So that's a lot of money back then, more than it is now. And that was the amount of money that I had left to buy fuel.
So I bought the cabin. And I can still remember walking back from the Bursa's office praying, lord, how are we going to get home? I'm going to have to get fuel. And as I walked along praying with my head down and it was in a very busy passageway on the boat.
In the centre of the boat I saw this piece of folded paper on the ground right over against the wall, sort of in a corner where they went around a corner and I bent down and picked it up and it was a folded up $5 note. The Lord provided for us on that journey. These stories remind me that we have a God who can provide for us in our times of need in so many ways we can trust him and turn to him.
And I praise the Lord for that. I'm Dr. John Ashton, have a great day.
