ANGELS ON MY SHOULDER

I relate the following stories from a friend I work with at the Temple. I’ll call him Fred:

“I’ve always tried to live a good life. I do my best to keep God’s commandments and pray every day. When my wife and I were young, we would frequently go long distances across the Arizona Desert to visit my in-laws. We had and old 1951 Ford that had seen better days, which came with four bald tires. Having more faith than sense, we braved the long trip with twenty dollars, just enough to pay for gasoline. We would never pull such a stunt today. On one occasion, we threw our belongings in the trunk and that included a metal record holder with a copper bottom and lid. After we had traveled for awhile, the day ended and we turned on the headlights, which kept flickering on and off.

We stopped, checked things over but could not find the problem. We finally decided to stop at what we called “the Gap,” really just an out of the way gas station, and get help. The attendant said he thought he knew what the problem was but that it wouldn’t be cheap and he wouldn’t have time to fix it till the next day. We were downcast, since we had no money for costly repairs. Just then, a stranger came by and said, “Check the trunk, Fred.” I did not know the man and he immediately left the gas station in his vehicle. I looked around in the trunk and found that metal record can leaning up against the tail lights. Every time we hit a bump, it shorted the wires and flickered the lights. We moved the can and never got a chance to thank the man who knew my name. Now, if this had been an isolated case, I could have written it up to coincidence, but things like that happened just when we needed them most.

On another trip, to the same destination, the car began to lurch, as if it was not getting enough gas. It would speed up and slow down, over and over and we finally limped to a garage. The mechanic was looking it over, when a different stranger, walked by, peeked over our shoulders and said, “Oh, I see the problem, you’ve just got a loose fuel pump bowl.” He reached over, hand tightened the bowl and the problem was fixed.

A repeat journey found us in need of a new tire to replace a puncture. We told no one of our predicament but in the morning, we found an envelope with 25 dollars in it, taped to our steering wheel, to pay for the new tire. God and His angels watch over us, especially when we do our best to follow His ways."