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 unbelievable reef. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Ann Browning. I was born to missionary parents up in Papua New Guinea. My dad was a district director in the island of Manas. He had a mission boat. He was a pastor, he was a teacher, and he was also a missionary nurse. And so his job was to go around the island to visit the villages, to take missionaries to new places, to check on how things were going, to make sure the schools were going well. And so he loaded up the Light, which was the name of our mission ship, and we took off to go to a new place to deliver some supplies and to drop off some missionaries. So dad collected the charts for the journey, and they took off on this trip. Now, on the charts up in those days, they had all the reefs marked, all of the islands marked, everything to do with the journey so that no one would get into trouble. And so off they went, and they were traveling along quite well. And the day was lovely, and the crew were doing their job. And out of the blue, the ship hit a reef flat. We would just stop, crash onto this reef, and everybody was tossed over on the deck. And everybody was very, very concerned, because when you hit a reef in any shipping accident, it can be very dangerous because it can actually damage the ship, and then you might sink. That will be pretty terrible. And so my dad, being the captain, he did everything he could with the crew's help to either try and keep going across the reef or to go back. I do remember that one of the boys went over to see if there was any way that they could keep going forward on the reef or go back. And it looked like they were very firmly stuck. So the. The crewboys got out the paddles and they tried to push it off backwards. With my dad roaring the engines, nothing happened. They were so firmly stuck. And there was an old pastor on the ship. His name was Pastor Manavaki. And he came up to my dad and he asked, would he be able to speak to him? My dad said, sure. And he said, pastor, he said, which means we should be praying first before we try to do anything to fix this situation. And so they had this lovely prayer season with everybody praying and saying, lord, we don't know how to fix this situation. We're on this reef out in the middle of the ocean. It's dangerous. We don't know if we've got any damage, but we're about your work. So please, will you help and guide and direct us? And so at that point, after the service, my dad, he got back into the wheelhouse of the ship and he felt impressed to go in reverse. So I put the ship in reverse, and all of a sudden, it was like the suction had come apart and the ship reversed straight back out into the free water. And because there could have been damage underneath, my dad asked a couple of the crew boys to hop over the ship to see just what damage had happened underneath. So they went and they swam underneath it, checked it out with a fine tooth combination, and discovered there was no damage at all. And they came up and they were just smiling from ear to ear and so thrilled. And they said, pastor, there's no damage. No damage anywhere. We've had a number of miracles today. We've been stuck on a reef. God's helped us get off. It's left the shape of the ship's hull in the reef, which is a strange kind of reef to leave that kind of a damage. And the boat itself has been cleaned of barnacles, and we haven't got any damage. So it was with great rejoicing and great praise that they had another prayer season to pray. And thank God that that actually made it off this reef with no damage and they could continue on their way. And my dad was able to alert the maritime union that there was an unknown reef there that no one had ever come across, but they were able to put it on the charts in the future. That became the first real amazing miracle that impacted me for my journey in life. God bless.
