Friday, February 10, 2012

Midnight Collision

 by Jerry & Jan Werner, Bend, OR

     Jerry: In March 1997, my wife Jan and I drove our Priva van (with a large glass windshield in the front), pulling a fully loaded trailer from Sisters, Oregon, to an art stamp convention in Southern California.
     We decided to leave late at night to miss the winter storm moving in the next day.
     After driving through Klamath Falls around midnight, we came around a bend in the road. As our headlights lit the long stretch of highway in front of us, we could see a herd of deer standing all across the roadway.
     The deer stood frozen, staring at our headlights as we sped towards them at sixty-five mph. I slammed on the brakes, but I could feel our heavy trailer pushing us forward.
     Jan:  I frantically searched for an open space where our van could drive through. But deer covered both sides of the highway. With the Priva windshield that comes right down in front of us, we could clearly see the deer directly in our pathway.

Angel On My Wing

By Bill Brabham, Aloha, Oregon (as told to Helen Haidle)


     During World War II, I flew a special P38 plane on daily spy missions to Germany from an air base in England. My plane was equipped with cameras to monitor enemy troop movements on the ground.
     One cloudy day as I flew back to the base, the flight instruments on my plane quit working. I tried everything to keep the plane from stalling, but it tipped downward in a 500 mile-per-hour nosedive into the city of London.
     My heart sank. I knew I was flying over a heavily populated area. Frantically, I tried to pull up the nose of my plane to stop its steep dive.    
     When the plane finally broke through the clouds about a hundred feet above London, it suddenly switched directions and headed back up in the clouds at a 45-degree angle.
     I didn’t know why the plane had changed directions so quickly—until I looked out the window.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Touch of Spirit

by Jim Stanley, Beaverton, OR

     There it is . . . still smoking from a fiery crash! A blackened shell, the remains of a 727, lay in the center divider of two runways at the Venezuelan airport. Forty-nine people died! 

     The year was 1983. I was to report for a one-month United Nations hydrologic project in Caracas, Venezuela.    
      “I’m going, too!” my wife Arlene proclaimed upon learning of the assignment.
    Preparations began, buying new luggage and summer clothes appropriate for the tropics, plus contacting our church secretary for names of missionaries in Venezuela. Much to our delight, the secretary informed us about a husband and wife team ministering in Caracas.
      We prayed for travel protection, insight into my new job requirements, and also “hitting it off” with the missionaries.
      The morning after we arrived at the Caracas International Airport, I went to the office of the Director of Venezuela’s Natural Resources for a briefing. As the briefing drew to a close, the officer surprised me by handing me a check for the entire thirty–day assignment.
     After stopping by a local bank to cash the check, I returned to our hotel.
      “Guess what I’ve got in my briefcase?” I said as I emptied the case, full of paper Bolivars on the bed. We both laughed as we exclaimed, “How rich we are!” 
      Our richness was short lived. The next day, headlines on the local newspaper declared:    
      BOLIVAR DEVALUED . . . 58 PERCENT!