Description

“It Changed My Life”

The year was about 1978. Lawrence was driving a truck pulling a 35-foot end-dump trailer traveling from Provo, Utah to Heber City, on a stormy, snowy day. Just as he was crossing over Deer Creek dam a car met him coming from the opposite direction. The car was coming a little too fast and when the two vehicles met at a curve in the road, the car began to skid out of control. It missed the tractor but went under the trailer just in front of the trailer axles. Before Lawrence could stop, the loaded trailer passed over the hood of the car from the passenger-side headlights all the way up and over the driver’s side windshield.

When the two vehicles came to a stop, Lawrence looked in his mirror at the car behind him. It was smashed down to about half its original height. Describing that moment, he said, “I felt sick! I sat there a moment and knew that I had to go back to that car, but I did not want to go for fear of what I would find.”

Finally, with dread, he walked back. As he did so, a young man climbed out of the passenger door, walked around to the driver’s door “and with herculean effort pulled the door open.” Lawrence said, “As I approached, I could see another young man slumped over the steering wheel which was pushed down on to his lap and legs. He was unconscious but alive.”

The young man then turned to Lawrence and asked, “Are you a member of the Church and can you help me give my companion a blessing?” I was in such a trance that I just said ‘yes.’ He then went back around the car and crawled in. At his direction I leaned into the car by the driver and the young man handed me a small container and said, “You anoint, and I’ll bless.” I had never done that before and the first young man could see that I needed help. He quickly coached me to accomplish the anointing and then he took over. He blessed the driver, right then and there, by the power of the priesthood, to be made whole! In a moment, that unconscious driver then started to stir! The first young man then got out and came back around to the driver’s door and helped his companion wiggle himself out of that smashed car! I stepped back, astonished at what I had just witnessed and been a part of!”

While all of this was going on, the Utah Highway Patrol and an ambulance arrived at the scene. After a quick examination both young men stepped up into the ambulance by their own power, and it drove away. Lawrence relates, “I then turned and looked at the damaged car and saw that the dash of the car was pushed down so that the steering wheel and steering column were pushed down on to the seat of the car exactly where the driver had been sitting. I realized that there should have been no way for that young man to not have sustained extensive injuries to his lap and legs. Yet he, after that priesthood blessing, wiggled his way out of that car, walked on his own power over to the ambulance, and stepped up into it!”

Those two young men were fulltime missionaries, living in Lawrence’s former ward. Later that night, Lawrence called the Bishop of that ward to check on the two elders. He was told that both
elders were home and doing fine, a little stiff and sore, but—fine! Those elders could not have known how meaningful and powerful that day would prove to be to Lawrence, for you see, faith and testimony had never come easy to him. He said, “I had gone to Ricks College and to BYU but still did not understand the significance of the work. I met Janet, my wife, at BYU and after some changes in my life, we were married in the Manti temple with me doing this at her desire and because I loved her, but not because of a real strong testimony. I just did not understand the significance of it all at the time.”

That is why Lawrence had never given a blessing and did not know what to do, but, that day changed his life forever. Since then, he has given many blessings and been witness to the miracles that followed them. Of that momentous day, Lawrence said, “it was a life changing experience for me! Heavenly Father knew that I would need to have something happen in my life that would make a lasting impression on me and so He allowed this event to happen. It changed my life.”

It is a true principle that sometimes the path of life is, and by divine design, must be painful in order to refine and shape us into what we must be as sons and daughters of God.

 

Copyright Glenn Rawson 2022

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