Experiencing a Wonderful Miracle

Paul's time in Petchaboon (see our previous post "Going to the Regions Beyond") proved to be not only a time of great import to the ministry but also to us personally. I will never forget the day he left, now so long ago, but still printed indelibly on my memory. As I stood saying goodbye to him at the front door of our little home in Bangkok I had no idea of the trauma that lay ahead. I just remember wondering whether I should tell him that I suspected I was pregnant again, but decided to wait until he got back as it would only make him more concerned about me while he was gone. That night I went to a Christian gathering. At the end of the meeting someone offered me a drink of orange juice. Within minutes of drinking the juice I began to feel rather sharp twinges in my stomach. By the time I arrived home the pains were excruciating. For three long days I vomited violently, unable to take even a sip of water without a violent reaction. I was so weak I could only give instructions to Peujun, the Thai girl living with us, to bath or feed David. On the third night I lay stretched over the bed on my stomach, exhausted, dizzy, my head hanging over the edge, my whole body wracked by the spasms and vomiting. I could only think, "I hope this doesn't do any damage to the baby." That night I began to miscarry. After three days the pains began ease and finally stopped, but I still continued to miscarry. As the days stretched into weeks there was no improvement. I longed for Paul to come home. He, of course, knew nothing of what was happening and, out there in the remote villages of central Thailand, I had no way of contacting him. A letter would have arrived long after he had already left and phones were non-existent there.

One night, as I knelt beside my bed, I cried out to the Lord..."Oh Lord, please, I want to keep this baby".

A stillness came over me, that beautiful peace which comes with the sense of the presence of the Lord, and deep within my soul I heard Him speak.

"The baby is going to be all right."

I got up from my knees with a firm conviction deep within, a quiet unexplainable confidence. The baby was going to be all right. Little did I realise I was about to learn one of the most important truths of the Christian life.

The Trial of Faith

I had both seen, and experienced, a number of miraculous answers to prayer. So when the Lord spoke to my heart with that clear word of assurance that the baby, fighting for life within me, was going to be all right, I expected a change in my condition to happen quickly, if not immediately. But this was not the case. Instead of improving I got worse. Like Abraham, who waited twentyfive years for God to give him the son He promised; like Joseph who, after receiving dreams from God that he would rule over his brothers, experienced the exact opposite - thrown into a pit, sold as a slave, ending up in the lowest prison in Egypt - until the time that his word came to pass (Psalm 105:19); like all the heroes of faith in the Scripture who believed God's word to them despite the opposing circumstances, I was about to learn the reality of the trial of faith. The words of Peter in the Bible were to become a living reality to me...

"...now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed" 1 Peter 1:6-7.

I was to learn the importance of knowing the promise of God and standing on His Word in the midst of the opposite circumstances of life. With each passing day and no change in my condition, I battled doubt and fear. But each day, as I waited on the Lord, His quiet peace and assurance would again whell over me and I would say to myself, "All I know is - the Lord says the baby is going to be all right". At long last the day came when Paul returned home. It had only been three weeks but had seemed a life-time. It was so good to have Paul's strong faith helping me through my times of weakness and testing, when people expressed their fear for the baby to hear him say too, "The Lord says the baby is going to be all right!"

Throughout our personal trial, the work we had been called to do in Thailand continued to grow. As Paul and I prayed together we felt a clear direction from the Lord to move from Bangkok to Chiangmai, in the north. This proved to be another challenge to our faith. I was due for another doctor's appointment. The months had passed and I was now five months pregnant and there was still no improvement in my condition. Although I had no pain, needless to say I was very weak. I had been told by the doctor to stay flat on my back in bed throughout the pregnancy. But over the months, as David developed from crawling to toddling, this proved impossible. I did not spend one day in bed.

This time, after I had been examined, the doctor took Paul aside. I did not learn until much later all he told Paul. Not until after the baby was born did he tell me that the doctor had said it would be a dead baby and that he feared for my life too. At that time Paul only shared with me that the doctor had said I should not go to Chiangmai. The flights were on old DC3s and were notoriously bumpy, and there was no one in Chiangmai capable of caring for me as the missionary doctor from the McCormick Hospital there was in the United States on a year's furlough. Paul had wanted to send me home to Australia where I could be with my mother and under the best medical care. But the doctor had said I would not be able to take the flight. We felt like we were boxed in. We had already arranged with people to move into our little house and we had sold our furniture in preparation to go. The new tenants were due to move within the next few days.

After Paul shared what the doctor had said, I went up into the bedroom to pray.

"What do you want us to do, Lord?" I asked.

My Bible was in front of me and I opened it up to read as I was praying. What I read came as a clear direction from the Lord, for with the words came a knowing within.

"Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left..." (Proverbs 4:27).

I knew that meant Chiangmai. We were not to turn aside from what we had planned. I went downstairs and shared with Paul.

"I believe we must go to Chiangmai as we've planned. The Lord will take care of me and the baby".

Within days we were on the DC3 to Chiangmai. For the first time the plane took a direct flight instead of stopping several times on the way, and it was an unusually smooth flight despite its passage over the mountains. The Lord was, as always, faithful to His Word. Paul had already organised our housing in Chiangmai during a brief prior visit, so we moved straight in. It was directly opposite the McCormick Hospital. As we knew the missionary doctor was away on furlough, Paul set out to see if there was anyone at the Thai government hospital who was capable of caring for me. This was the only other hospital in Chiangmai. He came back very excited.

"Guess what!" he said, "I've found a Thai doctor who not only trained in Britain and America but is also a specialist in cases like yours!"

The doctor was actually a professor at the medical school in Chiangmai. An expert in the field of gynalogical difficulties, he was probably the leading doctor in the whole country to be able to handle this kind of situation. Although he did not practise normally and did not normally attend private patients, he offered to visit me personally at home every week. This was unheard of in Thailand. I couldn't believe it. I was going to be under better care here in Chiangmai than I would have been in Bangkok. We were both amazed, so relieved and so thankful to the Lord for His faithfulness. When the doctor came to examine me I learnt for the first time what was causing the trouble.

"The baby is lying in the wrong position, horizontally across the womb, and the placenta is below it" he said. "I will have to take it by caesarean section at the eighth month."

I was, by now, six months. With this knowledge from the doctor Paul prayed with me. The next week when he visited again, he was astounded.

"The baby has moved!" he said. "It's now in the right position and the placenta has moved up." He shook his head in amazement. "That just does not happen."

Paul shared how we had prayed and the Lord Jesus had answered, and this Buddhist doctor nodded and agreed it was a miracle. We began to call our little unborn baby "our miracle baby".

Our Miracle Baby

I had set my eyes on seven months. It seemed such a long way away but I knew the baby had a good chance of survival if I could only make it to seven months. When I finally reached it I sighed with great relief. In my thinking I had made it to the "safety line". One week later I started in labour. After our tiny little girl arrived in the world, two months premature, the doctor came to me in amazement. He had discovered what had been causing all the problem. The placenta had been ripped at one end. It had obviously torn when I had been vomiting so violently. He could not believe that the baby could have survived. He could not understand how she had received the nourishment she needed. She truly was a miracle.

"The Lord has a special purpose for this little one" said Paul.

About ten days after she was born, we received a letter from a Christian group in New Zealand.

"Last Wednesday night" they wrote, "we were in a prayer meeting when a sense of urgency came upon us to pray for Bunty. We continued to pray until we all felt the burden lift. Did anything special happen that time?" they asked.

It was the exact time I was giving birth.

Paul had taken me in a wheelchair to see the baby soon after she was born. We had gazed at her tiny form in the humi-crib through the window. She had tubes in her nose and taped to her little face, but she looked so beautiful and we thanked the Lord together for her. The second time I saw her, however, I was alone. Paul was in a meeting with our missionary team and I so yearned to see her I walked slowly up the ramp to the second floor where her special room was. As I looked at her through the glass I had such a longing to hold her. Then she turned her little head towards me and opened her eyes and gazed around. Illogical as it was, because I knew she could not yet focus, I burst into tears.

"She should be seeing me" I cried to myself, "not the cold surrounding of a humi-crib."

The ache is my heart was so great I couldn't stand to look any longer and I ran down the corridor, sobbing. Suddenly, Paul turned the corner and was holding me and comforting me.

"I was in the middle of the meeting" he said, "and I suddenly knew you needed me. So I left them and came straight over."

On the third day after giving birth I went home to Paul and David, leaving our precious little girl still in the hospital. Our crisis was not yet over. It was still touch and go whether our tiny baby would survive. Missionary and Thai friends came with us to see her in the hospital and every time they saw her tiny frame I watched their faces fall and then look with pity at us. We would smile and assure them,

"She's our miracle baby. The Lord has said the baby is going to be all right."

They said nothing to me, but to Paul they expressed their concern.

"You mustn't get your hopes up too high." And to one another, "We feel so sorry for the Collins's".

At home, baby parcels were arriving from family and friends overseas. Amongst them was a "My Baby" book. I opened it. The words were written as though the baby was talking. I shook away the unwelcome thought from Satan, "Will she live to ever read this?", thanked the Lord again for the miracle and, under "My name is" slowly and deliberately wrote "R E B E C C A".

For six long weeks I could only watch our little girl through the window as she lay in the humi-crib. I had not even touched her, let alone held her. Then came the wonderful day, as I stood looking at her through the glass with such a longing in my heart, the doctor said "I think it would be all right for you to hold her now". Oh the joy as they let me into the room, opened the humi-crib and put my tiny baby into my arms. I held her little hands, stroked her little face, told her how much I loved her and how she was a special little girl, our little miracle, and how God had a special purpose for her. Every day I spent time with her and then one week later the doctor said,

"I think you can take her home now. She still only weighs 4 lbs but she'll do better with you than staying here. She needs her mother."

Words cannot describe the feeling as we drove home with the precious bundle and put her in the cot that had been waiting for months to hold her. The next few months were exhausting. Night and day, every two hours she would wake for her milk. But they were also wonderful days as she settled in with her family, getting stronger and stronger as the time passed. Soon the crisis was over and she was a normal, healthy little girl. We celebrated her first birthday. Then, farewelling all the ones we had come to love in Chiangmai, we left to set up our base in Bangkok.

As the years passed, the children grew with the awareness that they were part of the ministry with us. Whenever Paul and I went to distribute Gospel tracts to the crowds in Bangkok, David and Rebecca would always go with us. Keeping close to me they, too, would hand out the tracts and give people the message of Christ. They were also part of our times of prayer, and every night we would read to them and tell them the stories of Jesus. One night, when Rebecca was four years old, something very special happened. I woke to hearing David crying and asking for a drink and was about to get out of bed when he stopped. I waited to see if he would ask again, but it was obvious he had gone back to sleep so I got back under the covers. It was the cool season at that time, the only time of the year when the normally very hot and humid Bangkok feels a chill and we needed to put covers on the bed. As the children came into our bedroom the next morning, as they always did when they woke up, Rebecca said...

"Mummy, I saw Jesus last night".

"Did you, Sweetheart", I said, thinking she had been dreaming.

"Yes" she told us. "I was cold and Jesus came and rubbed my arms to make me warm."

I began to realise she was describing more than a dream.

"What did He look like?" Paul asked.

"He had hair like Mummy's" She pointed to my shoulder-length hair, "and He wore a long white gown with a golden belt."

"What did he say to you?" I asked.

"Nothing" she said. "He just listened. I told him all about my toys. Then David woke up and wanted a drink and Jesus said 'It's all right' and then David went back to sleep".

I remembered David waking and I knew she was describing a real experience. The Lord had visited her.

"What happened then?" I asked.

"Jesus said he had to go" she said "And he went back to Heaven again."

A few days later I was carrying her down the stairs to the living area when suddenly, pointing to the window, she said...

"Ohh...look, Mummy, look!"

The house had a strip of window at the top of the wall in the living area. The sun was just rising and its brilliant rays, caught by the window, were so dazzling we had to turn our eyes away.

"Oh, no it's not" she said. "I thought it was Jesus coming back again".

I realised then the glory she had seen as the Lord had visited her. He must have come in a blaze of brilliant, dazzling light.

As the years passed by Rebecca grew with a great sense of the call of God on her life. She knew she had been born for a purpose. She received the Lord personally into her life at a young age and as a young adult returned to Chiangmai. Today, she and her husband, Timothy, with their seven children, do humanitarian work and minister the Gospel to the tribes of the surrounding areas. She is our miracle girl, and that miracle is now being outworked in the precious lives of many tribal people.