oil and wine ministries

The Road to Anderson

I don’t think you should speak gloom and doom in testimony unless you can testify how light overcomes darkness in the end; and that God will restore all things back to you if you let him. The proof of my restoration is here in this church and my wife Judy. This testimony is not so much about me as the beautiful people Jesus put in my path to light up my way through the darkest time of my life.

It was 1995. My wife Alberta (Bertie) and I were on our way to Shreveport Louisiana for my mother’s birthday and to celebrate Thanksgiving. As always, we took our two dogs Angel and Little Bit along; they were like children to us. We had a great time celebrating and also found time to visit with some friends who we had helped in the past with their prison ministry. Late in the day on a Thursday we gathered up Angel and Little Bit, one sitting on the floor at Bertie’s feet and the other on her lap, and headed back home to Anderson, Missouri. It was dark by the time we got to the mountains and difficult to see. As we came into a curve we saw the headlights of a truck that was obviously out of control and which hit us head on. The car folded around us like an accordion.

That is when my life changed forever. Suddenly there was an eerie silence and I didn’t really know if I was dead or alive; all I could think of was one word, Jesus! The next memory is that of voices and glass breaking and a man telling a woman to hold my head because my neck might be broken, and I remember the woman telling me to stay still. Next the man said, “Let me hold his head now.” Then someone else said, “She’s gone, let’s try to get him out.” That’s when I tried to raise up but couldn’t because the steering wheel was stuck in my chest. I realized then how badly I was hurt and wanted to give up the ghost right then and there. I would simply leave and follow Bertie.

But the strong hand holding my neck began to tighten and I heard a strange language coming from the man holding me. The harder I tried to get out of my body the louder he spoke those words I couldn’t understand. Then I realized that I too was speaking words that I couldn’t understand. That’s when I realized my new friend had won the battle, I wanted to leave but he won’t let me go – I couldn’t join Bertie. Someone said, “If we don’t get him out he will bleed to death right here.” As they tried to manipulate my crushed leg and separate the steering wheel from my chest I passed out for a short time. When I woke up a woman was looking at me saying, “Jesus isn’t ready for you yet”. I passed out again, and this time I swear to you I saw Bertie in the spirit. She had an all-knowing smile on her face, which gave me such a feeling of peace before falling asleep once again.

I woke up on an operating table with nurses and doctors all around working on me to revive me. They were as surprised as I was when I came to and told them that I hurt and asked if I could get something for pain. A nurse disappeared from my view and then returned to give me a shot. I thanked her and passed out again. The next time I woke up I was at Saint Edwards hospital and very weak, but the pain was gone. They had done surgery on my chest and leg; I had tubes in my chest and pins in my legs but I was alive. People began to arrive to see me in the ICU; my brother and sister-in-law (now in heaven) and many others including my prison ministry friends Chet and Tom. Tom leaned over and said he was sorry but Bertie didn’t make it. He didn’t know that I already knew because I saw her in her spirit. Then Tom told me that Bertie had been taken to a funeral home near the scene of the accident and was going to be transported to Shreveport for her funeral.

Now I was obsessed with getting back to Shreveport to attend Bertie’s funeral but the head doctor told me I couldn’t go and suggested I arrange a memorial for her later. I told him I would be there for the funeral if I had to just get up and walk out. That was a monumental bluff and he knew it, I couldn’t even raise my head off the pillow. But he humored me and said that he would send in the lung doctor the next day to check the improvement of my lungs and the leg doctor to see how my leg looked. If they approved he would let me go to Shreveport in an ambulance.

While I was waiting our good friends, Ray and Mary Sue Gordon, visited me in ICU. I was telling them what little I could remember of the car wreck. When I got to the point that I could remember no more a lady came around the curtain who was able to finish the story. Her name is Wanda Rose and she is the lady who held my head in the car after the accident. She said it happened just in front of The Mountain Inn where she and some Catholic friends were having a weekly prayer meeting. When they heard the crash some went to check the man in the truck and some to our car, including a man named John who is the owner of the inn. Wanda said that John spoke to me in Hebrew and that I answered him in Hebrew. Mary Sue, Ray and I were speechless as she spoke. She told me that she had followed me to the first hospital where they were trying to stabilize me and had leaned over me and said that Jesus wasn’t ready for me yet. Then she had followed me to the hospital in Fort Smith and prayed for me during the entire surgery. She said she would talk to me again and then left. I thanked her. Later they checked both my lung and my leg. They pulled the tube out of my lung and the doctor said the swelling in my leg had gone down enough to make the trip to Shreveport by ambulance the next day.

The two attendants in the ambulance were told not to stop until they reached Shreveport. On the way I began talking with the attendant next to me, he helped me sit up and after a while I asked him if he knew where The Mountain Inn was and if we could stop there for a few minutes. He said he thought he knew where it was and asked the driver to make the stop. It wasn’t long before I felt the ambulance turn and stop. After a short while the ambulance door opened and a man said, “How are you Sam”? For a moment I didn’t know what to say, and then I asked him if his name was John. He nodded yes. After studying him for a moment I said, “You’re the man that wouldn’t let me die”. Then John told me that he believed God had some work for me to do. He didn’t know if it would be for one or for many, but there was work to be done. John gave me a card so I could call him and the prayer group. I gave him a hug and he said, “Sorry about your wife”. Then we left for Shreveport.

We went directly to the home of my friends Chet and Dori. Chet was a veteran of World War II. A man of war, turned man of God… and now He had him and his wife caring for me. They helped get me from the stretcher to a wheel chair and we went to Bertie’s funeral.

After the funeral we went to a church of about 3,000 people where I met the wife of a lawyer who had known Bertie and me. She told me that her husband Carl wanted to help me. I met him later at Chet’s home. When he walked in with a pad of paper and pencil I thought he wanted me to relive the accident all over again. But when he came up to the wheel chair he gave me the paper and pencil and said, “Don’t stop writing, no matter what. Through your darkest hours keep expressing yourself and using what God gave you”. My prison ministry friend Tom and Chet both suggested I start putting poems on bookmarks and later set me up with a computer and printer to get my bookmark ministry started.

I spent my recovery time in Shreveport helping out at a big Assembly of God church and doing what I could to help Tom and Chet at the prisons including Angola’s death-row. At church I stuffed puppets for the Puppet Lady and then began writing poems to match up with the characters of her puppets. I got to use my gift. I also started writing bookmarks, which the pastors took to death-row while I did baby-sitting back at the motel. During this time I was healing, but my leg was growing crooked and I needed therapy for about four months at a local hospital. My friend Fred would drive me there and back. One day I came out of the hospital and the car door was open on the driver’s side. Fred thought it was time for me to get back to driving a car, but I was afraid. Fred won and we began driving on country roads until I got back my courage.

During all this time God was using me, but I was still pining for Alberta and on several occasions I could hear her voice telling me to get to Anderson. After a year of thinking about it I started getting phone calls from folks in Anderson.

My mother understood how I felt and encouraged me to make the trip back to check on the house and see what was needed. So I took a step of faith and headed back to Anderson. Passing the site of the accident at The Mountain Inn was difficult but I prayed my way through.

A great example of how fast God will move when you are in His perfect will was when I met my wife Judy. One week after we met Judy and I were engaged and married not long after. Judy and I agreed to give Bertie’s wedding ring to the church for whatever purpose they wanted. I just knew Bertie would have wanted the church where she was secretary to have the ring.

Several years after the accident Judy and I were driving past The Mountain Inn when we noticed a man in front working on Christmas decorations. The man’s back was to me and I said, “John”? He turned around, smiled and said, “How are you Sam”? I just looked at him for a few seconds and then told him that because of him I have been able to give many testimonies. He replied that he also had given many testimonies about me. As we talked about the accident I asked him what language he was speaking to me that night. He said that people around us said it was Hebrew and that I was answering him in Hebrew. I told him that I didn’t know how to speak in Hebrew and he told me he didn’t either. Then he told me that our little dog Angel was found by the wrecker driver and that he buried her at the crash scene. Little Bit was hurt pretty bad but lived for a short time after being adopted by a young couple from Eureka Springs. Then I introduced John to Judy and gave him a book of my poems titled “They Wouldn’t Let Me Die”, which I wrote just after the accident. After John and I hugged he went back to his decorations and Judy and I got back on the road to Anderson.

A good friend told me to keep doing my gift even in my darkest hour and it will bring me back to the light. He was right! Jesus has also used Judy to restore my life. Her piano playing is growing in anointing like wild flowers and the bookmarks are getting out to countries all over the world. We both know who is responsible… our Lord Jesus.

To God be the glory!