Miracle in Butte

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Whitehall, Montana. May of 2020 in the heat of the Covid epidemic where everything was completely shut down. My family and I were heading to Butte for a quick diaper run. Normally when we traveled, even for just a quick trip, we loaded up on milk for the kids because we are known to take long and unexpected detours. This night we only took a couple of bottles after an exhausting day wanting to return quickly to where we were staying. It was a beautiful sunny Tuesday with rain expected in the evening. As we were nearing the town of Butte we saw the dark grey clouds starting to gather. It was early evening around 6:00 pm. We got our diapers and decided to pick up something to eat while we were out. It was now almost 8:00 pm and we decided to find an empty parking lot to eat our food before heading back to Whitehall. We found a nicely kept city park for our view. We found an empty parking lot, stopped the car, put it in park and left it running. Right away I noticed some smoke coming from the front of the car. I looked at the instrument panel and saw the temperature gauge read deep in the red. At first, I wasn’t too concerned as the car had an antifreeze leak and every day I had to top off the radiator a tad. I hoped I would find an easy fix. I got out of the car in a light drizzle, lifted up the hood and started looking for the problem. I saw the hose that connected to the radiator had popped off. I was comforted thinking it simply loosened and fell off and that I could just put it back on and re-tighten the hose clamp. Easy peasy. Fear quickly swept through me when I grabbed the hose and realized that there was nothing left on the radiator to connect the hose to. The entire piece that the hose clamps to had sheared right off. This was something I could not fix; I needed a whole new radiator. I got back in the car and looked at my wife and I could tell she could tell I was a little put off, which means I was really freaking out. I’m known in my house to be pretty excitable. My precious wife brought my heat level down just enough from the deep red that I was able to utter the following prayer: “Please send someone to help us Lord”. We decided to go ahead and eat our dinner while we tried to figure out what we were going to do. Here we were, stuck in the middle of a most unfamiliar and very much shut down town with no clue what to do. The kids had already exhausted their short allotment of milk and we were still exhausted. Rain, lighting, and thunder started raging and what happened next could only be written into a most predictable chaotic suspense movie……tornado sirens. Yes, tornado sirens started going off. We couldn’t see the skies, we were surrounded by buildings and tall trees, so we had no idea where the weather was coming from or where it was going. Winds came and whipped at us and hail pounded the car. After a short “what are we going to do, we have nowhere to go” moment we started laughing. A few minutes later the sirens stopped, the weather subsided, we checked out ok, and we thanked God for keeping us safe. Our heads began to clear, at least my wife’s did. She suggested we call a car rental place and see about at the very least renting a car to get back to where we were staying and figuring out where to get the car towed in the morning. She was able to get one person to answer a phone at 9 o’clock at night. The first answer was they had just closed and didn’t have any cars to rent. My wife was not about to give up so easy. She offered various scenarios that he could help us with but he was not choosing any of them. He was very apologetic and wasn’t even quite sure why he answered since he wasn’t able to offer any help. He was very nice and was trying really hard with my wife to figure something out. He then had an idea which meant he would have to sacrifice the rest of his evening to help us. He asked where we were and of course we had no idea. I got out of the car and went across the street to find out what the name of the business was. Remember that suspense movie script? We were stuck in Butte Montana in dark tornadic weather with no more food for our babies in a broken down car in the parking lot of a, are you ready for it? A funeral home. Well, at least we knew there was one of two ways we were getting out of there. Back to the rental car guy. He left his downtown office, went to his counter at the airport, got a car and brought it to us and then had his wife pick him up. He gave up his night and got his family involved to help us. God bless you rental car guy. While we were waiting for the miraculous rental car delivery, we still did not know what to do about our injured vehicle. Everything seemed to have calmed down for the most part, I wasn’t completely afraid of utter family devastation. Now the time that had transpired since our prayer for help was only about 15 minutes. My wife was praising the Lord while I looked one more time under the hood to see if I missed anything. Then a truck pulls up next to us in another light drizzle. “Y’all need some help?”. Fifteen minutes, max, after our prayer to send someone to help, help showed up. A man got out of the truck and we had a quick conversation about our situation and just as quick he jumped into action. He got on the phone with a local mechanic that he knew and had arranged to have our car towed in the morning. I don’t know if the mechanic was reluctant because we were strangers from out of town and he didn’t want to get burned but the man told him that even if we couldn’t pay that he would. That must have put the mechanic at ease because he agreed to pick the car up in the morning and give us a call when he came up with an estimate for the repairs. If that wasn’t already an extremely kind act, the man then offered us a house. He explained that his mom recently passed away and her house was still fully furnished but unoccupied and we were welcome to stay there as long as we needed. I thanked him for his generous offer but that we had arranged for a rental car and just a few minutes after that our rental car drove up. We thanked everyone for their most generous help and drove back to Whitehall where we were staying, got our babies some more milk, and called it an evening. In a couple of days, we went and picked up our car with a new radiator.
The whole event occurred from about 8 pm to 10 pm, although it felt like it lasted an entire day. It ended suddenly just as suddenly as it began. We moved through every emotion possible and through all the chaos God was with us the entire time working out what the enemy meant for harm for our good.
​Again, Romans 10:13 says “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. We called on His name and we were saved, it’s as simple as that, just a few words, and then we waited, although at the time nothing seemed simple. Someone showed up and took care of everything for us, more than we could have asked for. God took care of everything when we couldn’t, even amidst fear and doubt, He was still faithful. That’s how much God loves us, He goes all the way for us. If you find yourself in trouble, no matter how big or small it seems, call on the name of the Lord and He will be right there with you. All you need is just a few simple words.
Hi, this is Karrie now, I thought I would share some things from my perspective of the event. We had plans to be at a hotel in an unnamed city center about two days drive away that we had to cancel due to the delay in our car being fixed over the next week. I opened the news on my phone to read of extreme violence to bystanders during a riot that was going on at the exact time and place we would have been staying. Praise God for the delays in our life that we don’t know about. I think God allowed me to see what He protected my family from to recall in the future for when He asked us to do things or go places that didn’t make any bit of common sense. If ever you feel delayed, thank God! He goes before us!
Another thing, we were seasoned mountains and wilderness travelers. We always, always, always drive prepared with food, water, extra blankets, etc. We know how quickly weather and situations can change and that help isn’t always nearby. That night in Montana, we decided to jump in the car carrying only what we thought we would need for an hour drive round trip. We had done a deep cleaning inside the car that day and didn’t put our emergency essentials back in the car. The weather turned cold with the rain, and we didn’t even have a receiving blanket to cover the kids in. Unprepared even after years of being overly prepared and God still blessed us and kept us out of His supply of sustainment. Our toddlers sat in the back seat singing silly songs about the love of Jesus to bide their time. Also, I did not tell Rick to call me precious in his account, haha.