Life in The Family International

Tell us a special Christmas story—a Christmas miracle or something fun that happened when you were young?

Joni: This is one Christmas miracle that happened to us that I’ll never forget. It was Christmas Eve, 2000. Rowen was two years old and Chad had just turned one in October. We were out Christmas caroling and had brought Chad with us as he was little and wanted to stay with his mommy. He fell asleep while we were driving and so two of my friends stayed with him in the car to watch over him while we sang. We had just finished singing a song when my friend from the car comes up to me and says that I should go the car right away. I asked him if Chad was crying and he didn’t answer me so clearly. When I got there Chad was having a seizure. He looked so pitiful and it scared me so much. We prayed for him and drove right away to an emergency center that happened to be right down the road. When we got there the doctors took his temperature, checked everything and couldn’t find anything wrong, he didn’t have a fever, hadn’t been sick, but the seizure continued. They told us that it was very, very serious (muy grave.) I was having to desperately hang on to Jesus. They then sedated him, put him on an IV drip and put some other tubes in his nose for oxygen and told us that we needed to bring him to a better children’s hospital and sent us in an ambulance to the best one in the city. When we arrived there after looking at Chad and all the tubes hooked up to him, the main doctor takes Vas aside and prepares him by telling him that Chad might not make it. They checked him out again at this hospital and still don’t find anything wrong so they tell us that we’ll just have to wait out the night until the sedation wares off and see how he is in the morning. Vas didn’t tell me what the Dr. had told him and I’m glad he didn’t. The Lord kept telling both of us that he was going to be ok but it was a test of our faith to be sure. I stayed by his bed the whole night praying for him while Vas returned home to be with Rowen. Early morning came and Chad woke up and was his jolly and energetic self! He was jumping up and down in his crib, laughing and smiling. I was overjoyed! When Vas joined me in the hospital soon after, we were both so happy, praising the Lord and rejoicing. We treated Chad to his favorite breakfast at the time….I’m trying to remember…I think it was cornflakes, while we waited for the Dr. to arrive who was to check him. The Dr. conducted his tests and Chad was perfectly fine, nothing wrong! We asked Jesus if He had anything to tell us about why that had happened. He told us that He wanted to give us a special Christmas present—a new realization of the joy of our family, our children and the complete happiness and joy that comes after thinking that you’re loosing something so precious and then it’s given back to you. We enjoyed Chad, Rowen and each other so much that Christmas!

Here are some random pictures from Christmases past.

Vas and Joni are members of The Family International and are fulltime missionaries in Mexico. Vas helps to organize outreach, writes, records and produces music, plays in a band, performs and does shows, counsels young people and engages in evangelism. Joni teaches her four children, evangelises, performs and does shows, sings and records and assists The Family childcare board. More about Vas and Joni

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.