Angels and Miracles

By Kim Kielley

Angels and Miracles is about real people who have had the rare opportunity to have an angel visit them or experience a miracle in their lives. Their stories are true and from the heart. While some people practised a specific religion, there are others who didn't. The events that occurred in this book knew no boundaries. Angels and Miracles is a melting pot of beliefs that have experienced truly amazing and wondrous occurrences. These stories will warm your heart as you read them and reinforce that, even in our darkest hour, God has not abandoned us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: Oct 19, 2005
• ISBN: 9781771170512

Kim Kielley

Kim Kielley has written for numerous publications, in Newfoundland, other parts of Canada, and Europe. She resides in St. John’s with her husband, two sons, and their black Labrador retriever. Kielley is now the associate editor for the weekly newspaper The Express in St. John’s.

Book preview

miracle.

A Christmas

Miracle

THERE WAS A LOUD BANG and then a great belch of oily black smoke puffed out from under the hood of the car as it limped its way off to the side of the highway. Ambrose Penton watched the disabled vehicle signal and pull over to the shoulder. I’m not stopping, he told himself. I’ve got to get home. It was Christmastime and Ambrose was headed home to Marystown. He was working at a hospital in Bull Arm and was anxious to see his wife, Blanche, and their children. He pressed down on the accelerator.

You go back and get that man! a little voice told Ambrose. I’m not stopping, Ambrose repeated. As each kilometre went by, the conversation continued and the needling grew worse. Finally, after about eight kilometres of deserted highway, Ambrose turned around.

He passed the car with the man looking under the hood, circled back and parked behind him. Ambrose got out of his car and approached him.

I was on my way home and I saw your car break down. Is there anything I can do? Ambrose asked the stranger.

The man turned and tapped his mouth and ears with his hands. He was deaf and unable to talk. It occurred to Ambrose that the man couldn’t have heard the loud bang the car had made, and he felt worse for not stopping right away. Okay, he nodded to the deaf man and headed back to the car where a woman and her baby sat.

Is there anything I can do to help you? he asked the woman in the back seat with the baby, surrounded by Christmas gifts. She tapped her mouth and ears with her hands. Ambrose realized that the only one who could hear him was the infant in her arms.

He found a piece of paper and wrote the message out. The stranger had no idea what was wrong with his car. The young couple were headed to Burgeo, hundreds of kilometres away, and here they were stranded on the side of the highway in the middle of winter, just trying to get home for Christmas like Ambrose.

I can’t take you to Burgeo, Ambrose wrote on the paper, but I can get you as far as Clarenville. I’ll call your family and ask someone to come out and get you there.

The two men unloaded the disabled car and piled all their belongings, Christmas gifts, and each other into Ambrose’s tiny vehicle.

When Ambrose arrived at the Holiday Inn in Clarenville, he contacted the young couple’s family and told them the situation. They would come for the couple the next morning. Ambrose relayed this to the couple and a sympathetic hotel manager who generously gave them a room for the night.

Back on the road and hours from home, Ambrose finally pulled into the driveway in front of his house in Marystown. Blanche was pacing the floors by now, going from window to window, worried sick.

When Ambrose finally finished his story about the young couple and their baby, Blanche took him by the hand and led him to their spare room. There, spread out over the bed, were the contents of the biggest Christmas basket Ambrose had ever seen. There was food and presents everywhere. Blanche informed him that she had just won the basket of goodies from a school ticket draw that afternoon.

What time did you get the call that you won? Ambrose asked Blanche. She told him it was the same time that he was driving the couple to the Holiday Inn.

Blanche and Ambrose just stared at each other. It was Christmas, and Ambrose had just helped a stranded young couple and their baby find a room at the inn. His reward was a basketful of Christmas goodies.

Ambrose and

his Patients

AMBROSE AND GOD are pretty close. Ambrose asks for help for his patients and God seems to deliver, almost on cue, every time.

Ambrose is a nurse. When other nurses in the little hospital he works in need someone to ease a dying patient’s anguish or a grieving family’s pain, they send for Ambrose.

Ambrose goes to church as often as he can, but he doesn’t believe you have to go to church if you want to be close to God. Some of the prayers that have been heard best by God, he feels, are prayers at patients’ bedsides or when he is in his own room, relaxed and drifting off to sleep.

He remembers an elderly man for whom he had prayed. He was dying from cancer and was in so much pain. Ambrose was working the night shift in the intensive care unit.

As the man was wheeled into his room, his family sadly stood by, watching their father slowly slip away. When it came time to go, they said their goodbyes and left. This made the elderly man more upset, so Ambrose put his paperwork aside and went to sit down beside him.

By now, the old man was moaning in agony. Ambrose quietly lowered his head and squeezed the patient’s shoulder. Lord, if you’re listening, will you please give this poor man a glimpse of what you’ve got in store for him? I can’t, but I know it’s beautiful, and it would do so much to ease some of his suffering, Ambrose prayed.

No sooner had the prayer left his thoughts than the old man’s eyes flew open. Oh, look! There it is! Come and get me. Come and get me! he gasped. From that moment, he settled right down. Ambrose continued his vigil through the night until early the next morning, when the old man finally died.

Ambrose’s father-in-law had a similar experience just before he died. In Ambrose’s own words, he was a miserable, crusty old goat. But before he died, the man made peace with himself and the people to whom he had been mean over the years. He admitted to Ambrose he was sorry for the things he had done and wondered if God would ever forgive him.

Ambrose assured his father-in-law that, if he truly wanted to be forgiven, all he had to do was ask. As time went by, the old man grew ill until eventually he was on his deathbed, and Ambrose came to visit