“Lucky” to be alive. God spares Pa Thom as people prayed
A guy walks to a bar and takes a stool next to a man having a drink with a dog lying at his feet. He can’t help but notice the dog. It has real gnarly looking skin on his rear quarter, but no fur. “What happened to that dog’s fur?”, inquires the stranger. “Well,” came the reply, ‘He was lying outside under my kitchen window when the frying pan caught on fire. I pitched the burning oil out the window and he got the worst of it. His skin grew back, but no fur.”
The stranger looked closer and noticed that the dog only had half a tail. “Did he loose his tail the same time,” he asked? “No, that dog was always so happy he did nothing but wag his tail. I went into the butcher shop to get him a bone last summer. The butcher had a big floor fan running to defrost his freezer; darned if that dog didn’t wag his tail right into that fan”! “Wow! marveled the stranger. “I see he’s missing his left rear leg, did that get cut off with the fan”? The dog’s owner sighed, “No, that happened when he was chasing a rabbit while I was mowing hay. The dumb mutt ran straight into the mower!” The stranger shook his head, “He been through a lot!”
The owner scoffed. “Oh that’s not all. He was out hunting with my son and he scared up a bird. My son’s not an experienced hunter, and he shot the bird as soon as it took flight, but he blew off part of the dog’s right ear, blinded his right eye, and broke off his right incisor.” “That is amazing!”, marveled the stranger. “What’s this dog’s name?” The owner looked up from his drink, paused, and answered, “Why, his name’s Lucky”.
I was a driving to the rice farm at about 2:00pm on the second day of the big, five day,”Parchumban” Festival. It’s a day when Cambodian’s honor their dead ancestors, and often drivers are not very sober. I was tooling down the highway 163 kilometers out of Phnom Penh, when a guy who’d pulled over to the other side of the road, probably to to relieve himself, decided to make a u-turn right in front of me. I swerved left to miss him only to be facing an oncoming vehicle, so I swerved back right only to blow my right front tire. Off the road i went, rolled-over, right into a buffalo wallow. My windshield got crushed in the crash and I was strapped into my seat, upside down, in about four feet of dark brown, muddy, water.
I had my wits about me enough to release the seat belt, but my head was under water so, I did a flip to the floor which was now my ceiling. I only had about 8 inches of air, so I grabbed a deep breath and tried to reach for the window button only to grab a piece of broken windshield. That didn’t do my hand any good so, I decided to kick out the window. Guess what? The movies are wrong. You can’t kick out a window when you are upside down in water.
The water was rising, and all of a sudden, I was at peace. “This is it! I’m finally going to get to die! I’d have preferred clean water, but, It’ll be quick”‘ Then, I noticed light between my seats, and could see much of the back of the car was out of water, so I took a dive under what used to be to top of my seat, and wound up in the rear. I started knocking on a window and a farmer rushed up and opened the rear door. My suitcase came floating out with me. A crowd of about 30 people had gathered.
Some of the first people to come to my aid were church members who recognized me. There is a benefit in having thousands of members all over the country. One of the young men who came up to me had worked in our tractor factory. I answered the questions for the police report and gave him some money to get the car hauled back to Phnom Penh. He flagged down a bus; suggesting I get away before the police got “greedy”.
The bus was packed, and I smelled like a wet, musky, water buffalo. The passengers were not very happy, so I sat on the front doorstep for the nest 70 kilometers, with my hand wrapped in my handkerchief. After an hour of this, I noticed one of our pastors flagging down the bus. I called for the driver to “Stop!” They were very happy to be rid of me. I climbed into the pastor’s car, went about 500 meters and his right front tire blew. The spare was flat. I will not suffer you the details, but finally, at about 8:00pm, I was back in Phnom Penh, getting my hand bandaged. Just call me “Lucky!” (I know, I am blessed to be alive! But, I really am looking forward to heaven!)
Our time is not our own. At about 2:25 pm Cambodia (GMT+7 hours) Sou felt an urgent call to pray for a short time, and then she had peace. Others let me know that as well. Maybe I am “Lucky”.
