Did God perform a miracle on my way to New England?

You wouldn’t expect a Yankee fan to love going up to Red Sox country, but I do. I love New England.

My wife’s family has been visiting a lake in central New Hampshire for over 70 years (a tradition I got grafted into in 2005), and last week’s visit to the area gave me the chance to evangelize in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and Brattleboro, Vermont.

Brattleboro was cool. We stopped there on the way up. I assumed every town in Vermont consisted of a general store, ten human beings, and two hundred cows, but Brattleboro was actually pretty bustling. It reminded of several of my favorite neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

There were a lot of people wandering around that appeared to be homeless or addicted to something, so I got right to work handing them tracts. I also stopped at a great little coffee shop called Mocha Joe’s. The baristas were super friendly, and both of them gladly took tracts from me.

It was a two hour ride from Brattleboro to the lake in New Hampshire, and shortly after leaving town, the battery light came on in our truck. I was able to make it through Vermont with the light on, but as I drove, I also noticed our fuel efficiency was dropping rapidly.

As I crossed the New Hampshire border, the air and radio turned off, the windows stopped working, and every light on the dashboard lit up. I lost all power — including the ability to steer — as I pulled up to a pump at the most nondescript New Hampshire gas station you could imagine. (It didn’t even have a name. The sign just said, “Gas.”)

The guy inside the gas station came out with a jumper pack that he said could jump a semi with the snap of a finger. We gave it a go, but my truck didn’t start. We let it charge a few more minutes and it finally turned back on. The battery light and check engine light stayed on, but I was able to make it to the lake. Before leaving, I gave the guy a tract.

Here’s the weird thing. The truck was fine after that. I used it all week with no further issues. Even the battery light didn’t stay on. Far be it from me to guess what God was actually up to here, but it sure felt as if Someone really wanted us to break down at that exact gas station at that exact time, to give that exact guy that exact tract…

Later in the week, I went to Plymouth State University. (That’s the real PSU for all you Pennsylvanians.) My youngest son joined me, and we positioned ourselves at a crosswalk to hand out tracts to students as they came and went from their classes. We handed out 200 in all.

One kid named Thomas (I call him a kid; he was probably 20) stopped to talk for a couple of minutes. He had some honest questions about religion in general and Christianity in particular. I was able to help him understand the reliability of the Bible by comparing its staggering 64,000 cross references to the way committees research and vet his college textbooks.

I’ve never done campus ministry before and would like to make it a more regular part of my work. I wasn’t sure how it would go, and maybe future experiences won’t be as smooth as this one, but I found all of the students to be extremely friendly.

Overall, it was a great week with some great opportunities to share the gospel with the fine folks of New England.

-JDM-