On the 8th Day of Christmas Past, Ron Millburn (MHA Tour Guide) shares a treasured Christmas:
Question: How was an absolute knowledge that prayers are answered felt in today’s story?
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Christmas 1995
By Ron Millburn, MHA Tour Guide
The Christmas season of 1995 proved to be as severe and bleak as any I had ever known. Mountains of hospital bills were piling up from chemo treatments, bone marrow transplants, radiation, and surgeries. The miracle for which I had been fasting and praying, along with so many others, was not happening; and my wife, Harriett, was only getting worse. It was on Christmas Eve when we drove to the Emergency Room at LDS Hospital, she having felt a terrible pain in her stomach. Three days later she underwent another surgery. She had a wonderful oncologist, and it was with glistening eyes that he told me that they just had to close her up, for there was nothing more they could do; her time on this earth would soon come to an end.
The first week in December of that Christmas season I remember sitting down with Louise (probably not her name) at LDS Hospital. She worked with patients’ financial concerns and insurance companies. Harriett had worked as a clerk in the Federal Court System in downtown Salt Lake City and had very good insurance, and yet I was informed that we had accumulated a $70,000 bill over the past year. Not having that amount of money available, we were put on a contract to pay so much a month for the remainder of our lives (at least that’s the way it seemed to me).
After we left that depressing meeting we had Christmas facing us, and kids who still expected Santa to be as generous as he had always been.
The next day, Saturday, we went to the South Towne Mall to do some Christmas shopping. Our most expensive purchase was a number of computer games that were the latest and greatest that 1995 could produce. When we got home and unloaded the car, we could not find the computer games. They were in a black plastic bag, and after thoroughly searching the trunk of the car, we came to the conclusion that they never made it home. So back to the mall we went.
I first went to the “Lost and Found” to find no one had found them, or at least no one had turned them in. Next, we retraced our steps, going to each store and looking around and inquiring if anyone had turned in a black plastic bag full of computer games. No one had.
Deseret Book was the last store we checked. (Deseret Book was in the mall at the time.) No luck. Discouraged, we sank down onto a bench in front of the store. Here we were, with $70,000 in medical bills to pay, and then we splurge to buy computer games for our children for Christmas, and then we lose them. I think we were both feeling about as rock-bottom low as a person can go.
As we sat there, a thought came into my head. Heavenly Father knows where those computer games are. And so I said a prayer in my head something like this: “Heavenly Father, it’s really tough for us right now. Harriett has this cancer that won’t go away; we have medical bills there is no way we can pay; and now we’ve spent money we don’t have to purchase some computer games we just lost. We have looked everywhere and done everything we can to recover them, but have not found them. You know where they are. Please tell me.”
And He did. I immediately knew where they were. I grabbed Harriett’s hand and we went back to the Hallmark Store. We had been there before and had searched the store, and had asked the clerk if a black bag of computer games had been turned in, and she had said no. But I knew the games were in there somewhere because Heavenly Father had answered my prayer immediately with an unmistakable spiritual impression. We searched the store again, going up and down the aisles, but found nothing. Then I stood in line again and spoke to the same clerk.
“Remember me?” I asked.
“You’re the one who lost the computer games,” she said.
“Yes. And I know I left them in this store. Could you please look again to see if they’ve been turned in?”
She said she had been there the whole time and nothing had been turned in, but she looked again where they kept the “Lost and Found” and again found nothing. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but they’re just not here.”
“Yes, they are,” I said. “They’re here somewhere. Where else could they possibly have been placed?”
“I really don’t know. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She was getting impatient because there was a line of people behind me.
“Is there anyone else in the store I can talk to?” I asked. Just then another employee came out of the back room.
“Ask her,” I said. “Jill (probably not her name), has anyone turned in a bag of computer games?”
“Were they in a black bag?”
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Just a minute.” She went into the back room, and then returned with our long-lost black bag of computer games. “Someone handed them to me as I was going into the back room and I forgot to put them with the Lost and Found,” she said.
As we left the store, Harriett asked, “How did you know?”
I just pointed up, because I couldn’t talk.
That was Saturday. Monday morning at work I called Louise because I had another insurance question for her. She said, “Just a minute. Let me look into your file.”
I waited for a while, and then I heard her say, “Oh, my goodness! No way. . . ” She then spoke to me, “I just discovered something about your insurance that you might be interested in. Did you know that your insurance . . . ?” Whatever words she used after the word “insurance” went right over my head.
“No,” I said. “What does that mean?”
“It means that any expenses over and above what your insurance company will pay will be assumed by the hospital.”
“You mean I don’t owe the hospital $70,000?”
“That’s right. You’re free and clear.”
“I’m glad I called,” I said. I was ignorant of that provision in Harriett’s insurance, as was Louise, and it could have cost us dearly. Another look through a bulging file of insurance papers revealed a very expensive Christmas gift for us that came at a very critical time in our lives. I was ignorant of the whereabouts of those computer games, but a desperate prayer sent heavenward, through the gift of the Holy Ghost, revealed the location of those gifts meant for our children.
In all of the many decades of Christmases I’ve lived through, no other Christmas comes close to this one in giving me an absolute knowledge that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ live, that the Holy Ghost is real, and that They love us and know us, and will answer our prayers, great or small. I felt as Francis Webster did in the Martin Handcart Company: “Every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives, for we became acquainted with Him in our extremities.” (Andrew D. Olsen, The Price We Paid, 424).
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