Miracle of the Week

We've had a lot of miracles that are only tangentially related to missionary work, but have solved a lot of potential problems. The most remarkable of these was probably the delivery of our shipment on the day we arrived in Barcelona (the other mission presidents lived out of suitcases for several weeks).

This week saw another one of those remarkable little miracles. On Tuesday afternoon we took the train to Murcia, a long 7-hour trip from Barcelona. We worked, slept, and ate on the train, and arrived about 9:00 p.m. In the taxi on the way to the hotel, Kathleen realized she had left her purse on the train - complete with passport, credit card, etc. This had all the makings of a major disaster: being caught far from home with no identification, not to mention the time and effort to cancel and replace the credit cards and passport. So we did what we always do: pray and call the office Elders.

Elder Jensen, our secretary, called the train company but got nowhere. He then called the missionaries in Lorca, where the train was due to arrive shortly, and asked them to run over to the train station and see if they could get past the ticket agents, get on the train, locate the purse, and get off before the train left for the next city. An hour later we received a telephone call from a breathless Elder Monks in Lorca: "We've got the purse!"

The Elders talked their way onto the train by telling the ticket agents that their mother had left her purse on the train. They found it under our seats, right where Kathleen had left it, with everything, including the passport and credit card, still intact, and jumped back off the train before it pulled out of the station headed for Cartegena! We refer to this incident as "El Milagro de la Bolsa Encontrada en el Tren por los Santos Elderes de Lorca y el Día Grammie-Doll."

The reliquary, now part of the permanent collection of El Museo de Calatrava 10-12