What I wanted to do today, let me start out with a psalm. You don't need to turn there, I'll just read it to you. And it says, trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on his faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord. He'll give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in him. He shall bring it to pass. He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. You notice that little phrase there, delight yourself also in the Lord, He'll give you the desires of your heart. Okay, how true that is, because He is the great desire of our heart. But you don't always get what you want. That's the other thing too. And that's where some of our Christian friends go wrong. You don't always get what you want. You always get what the Lord would have for you. But you don't always get what you want. Because the Lord knows what's best for you. And sometimes the things that seem to be the worst... Well, they turned out to be exactly what we needed, you know, because the Lord knows that. And I want to tell you a personal story today, basically. Some of you know it because you've heard me talk about it before. Others of you have heard me allude to it, but you've never really heard the story, and you wondered what I was talking about. And so you know the story. Some of you know the story. Linda knows the story. Mike knows the story. Irene knows the story. Some of you do. Some of you don't. But I told it up in coarse gold to the brethren there. It encouraged their hearts. And I thought, we got a lot of new folks here. They'd like to hear this too, I believe. So may God bless as I really give you more of a testimony than a devotion. But I'm going to be talking about our first child, Stephen, who lived for 52 days. And of course, the Lord took him in his own good time. And we'll talk about that. I'll just tell you some things we learned about it and then tell you the story. We learned to trust God from something like this. We learned to trust God even in the trial, even in the things that we didn't want. Becky and I learned compassion during these times. Looking back, a lot of compassion, you know, going through this tremendous trial. We learned that God can supply all of our needs. And we've never had much money, you know, not complaining about that. Never had much money, but when things got tough or get tough, we just look at each other and say, God supplied in the past, He'll supply again. And we can say that even now with our poor, broken down, loved van in Tucson, God will supply. We know that. And we've never been the same since Stephen died on February 7th, 1983. But, you know, the rest of that story because, you know, God's blessed us with four wonderful children, with four good in-laws that are more family and kids than in-laws. And, you know, they're all doing well. So let me start at the beginning here with the story of little Stephen. Becky and I got married on August of 1976. And we wanted children, you know, we were in college, we wanted children. And God was not pleased right away to give us children until Becky finally got pregnant and had a miscarriage. And so that was a tough beginning there. And then again, and another miscarriage. And so we didn't know what was wrong and what was going to happen. In 1982 we got pregnant again and waited till the third month to let anybody know because after two miscarriages you get a little gun shy, you know, and so Finally things were progressing. Well things were going well and so Although Thanksgiving time came and Becky got very very sick, you know, but she got over it and all seemed to be going well until the evening of December 15th and in 1982. She was nauseous, she was cramping. We never had a baby, so we didn't know exactly what was wrong, but we did go to the hospital, and the hospital called the doctor, and our doctor was not available. A doctor on call met us instead. Actually, he didn't meet us. He just talked to us on the phone and said, well, just go home in the morning, go see your doctor. And we did that, because we didn't know any better. And when we did get, and I don't think it would have made a difference anyway, to be honest with you. But when we did go see the doctor in the morning, he told us the news that you're going to have a baby today. And it was 15 or 16 weeks too early. Well, you know, he left us alone. We loved our doctor. Dr. Leister was a great doctor. We'd known him for all this time. And he was very, very helpful to us. More like a maybe like a granddad than a doctor. You know, here's an older gentleman. And so he said, you're going to have some decisions to make today. I'll leave you to consider those decisions. We were right next door to Doctors Hospital. Or there was the other option was Loma Linda. Doctor's Hospital, it's become an abortion clinic since then. I don't know if it still is an abortion mill, but it was a hospital at that time. But he told us if you go to doctor's hospital, they won't be able to save the baby. If you go to Loma Linda, you've got a chance to save the baby. So he left us alone, and we're talking, talking it over. And he came back in and says, look, I know you guys. Go to Loma Linda. Loma Linda's where you need to go. And so we jumped in the car, and off to Loma Linda we went. They knew we were coming. And so they were watching and waiting for us. And when we pulled up and Becky stepped out, they looked at her. You're the one having a baby? She wasn't even showing yet, you know? It was one of those kind of situations. But they took her in. And sure enough, after they did everything they could to stop the labor, they couldn't stop the labor. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon, she had little Steven. And of course, truthfully, we had no hope of the baby living at 24 weeks, especially back then. We're talking 1982. Yeah, it was 1982 when he was born. So we just cried, prayed, hugged each other, and took her back to her room. You know, she went back to her room and where we sat and waited and the nurse came in and she says, you want to see your baby? Couldn't believe. Yeah. You want to see your baby? Baby's down in the NICU, you know, neonatal intensive care ward unit. And that began an incredible journey. Becky wasn't allowed to go down, so I had to go down myself. Some of you have seen the picture where I have my hand in the incubator, and little Stephen's 12 inches long. That's all he is. And it was kind of scary, to tell you the truth. But I can tell you, although now everybody knows it's true, even abortionists know that it's true, at 24 weeks, that's a baby. and absolutely a baby. Fingernails, I mean the whole thing. Now that our ultrasounds are so precise and good, nobody can deny that that baby is alive. They still may want abortions, but they cannot deny that the baby is alive. And he was alive. And he struggled. There were about 10 to 15 babies in that unit at any given time before COVID. We all had to wear, during COVID, we were supposed to wear masks and everything. Well, we had to wear masks to go in. We had to gown up. We had to scrub up. We scrubbed up where the nurses and the doctors did. And we put the robe on. We put the mask on. And we'd go in there. And that was actually for all of the babies' safety. that was very, very important, to not bring any germs in. And they really emphasized that. And that would be our life for the next 52 days, going down to the hospital every day, you know. Usually in the evening after my duties here were done, we'd go down there. Sometimes we'd go down twice a day because we'd be allowed occasionally to go in at midnight And Becky could hold little Stephen there for about 10 minutes while they cleaned the incubator. And so that was always a precious time that we looked forward to. And he weighed one pound, five ounces, you know. Well, you know, all we could do is put our hand in the incubator, usually talk to him. We put a little tape recorder in there with tape recorded music just to keep him going, you know, and to hear it be stimulated. We talked to him as much as we could. And he was growing. and appeared to be doing pretty well. Oh man, it's a roller coaster ride. This problem comes up, then this problem gets solved. This problem comes up, this problem gets solved. Some of the nurses were very, very kind. Some of them were Christians, we were able to find out. Not everybody out at Loma Linda is Seventh-day Adventist. That's Seventh-day Adventist Hospital, but there's all different kinds of people there and all different kinds of doctors there, too. And so, you know, we would pay attention to the other babies, too. We never touched them, of course. But, you know, you get to know them. Their names are on the incubator. And sometimes those names would be gone. And it'd be good news because the baby went home. And most often it was. Not good news, you know, and so those are the things that we just dealt with during that time after 42 days in the hospital Steven developed a very serious problem. He had a heart problem and with this heart problem They said he could not survive without an operation but the operation probably he probably couldn't survive the operation and So that's the terrible dilemma that we are in, except they did have an experimental drug. They said that this could possibly work. He had a hole in his heart, and this drug, if it administered and if it worked, would close that hole. And we wouldn't have to have surgery. And so he says, well, that's what you recommend. That's what we'll do. Seems like the right thing to do. But there is a possible side effect. It can affect his kidneys. Well, we don't think he's going to survive a surgery. This could affect his kidneys. We'll just have to do it. And, of course, it didn't work. It affected his kidneys. It closed the hole in his heart and affected his kidneys. Now, just for context, we're talking 1982. Things are a lot different today. A child born at 24 weeks, has a pretty good survival rate. You know, they really do. And it's because of advances in medicine, the Lord's good providence to give doctors wisdom. I like to think and I believe it to be true. Loma Linda is a teaching hospital. I think they learned a lot working with Stephen that helped babies later on, you know. And so now you've got a survival rate well over 50 percent, maybe up into 75 percent if everything is well and healthy at birth. Stephen's Well, he would have been the second smallest baby born at Loma Linda to survive, had he survived. So that's how much technology has changed over time. The doctor called us in after the surgery, after some testing, and said that surgery worked, but it affected his kidneys. His kidneys had begun to shut down. Nothing we can do. He'll die within 10 days. And, of course, we were heartbroken. But we also were praying. And in God's providence, he started to look better. He started to put on weight. And we thought, the doctor's wrong. He's going to come through this. It's going to be OK. But after about four or five days, it became obvious that the weight he was gaining was not good weight. It was water retention. And he began to turn wrong colors and such like that. And we knew he wasn't going to survive, just as the doctor had told us. And we got an early morning phone call, February 7th, to come in right away. And of course, it's still emotional. We went down there and Becky got to hold it. We knew it was God's will. That doesn't mean we wanted it to happen. Very sad, very difficult. We were asked if we wanted to transport him to the mortuary. We said, yes, we did. They got everything ready. And while they're getting everything ready, the doctor, head doctor, wanted to talk to us, you know, about what had happened, which we appreciate. So we went in there to talk with him. And he was going to comfort us and try to help us. And there was the lady doctor that basically had his care was shaken too, you could tell she was in there. But it was the head doctor we were talking to and the chaplain. So it was his doctor, the head doctor, the chaplain, and ourselves. And the doctor started talking to us. And he said, just yesterday, I know you know this, you saw a baby go home from the NICU. We said, yeah, we did. He said, you must be very angry about that. I said, we're not angry. We're thrilled. We're thrilled. Whenever a baby went home from the NICU, he said, well, you know, obviously you lost a child. You must feel jealous. You must feel angry. I said, we're not angry. He said, well, then you're in denial. No, we're not in denial. We've been through this thing. Our baby died. We know our baby died. He said, well, you have to be angry about that, maybe even angry at God. We're not angry at God. We're trusting in God. We trusted in God all along. It didn't turn out the way we wanted it to turn out, but we're trusting God. And of course, the conversation, I'm not giving you the conversation exactly how it went, but it was like this. And he was upset. He was upset. He said, you're in denial. You've got to realize how bad the situation is and how difficult it is. Well, it was getting more difficult in there. I'll tell you, that wasn't helping at all, you know. And I was getting upset. And I told him again, we're fully aware of what happened. We didn't want it to happen. But we're glad for every baby that's left this NICU and the good work that you've done. And he just had a disgusted look on his face. And finally, the chaplain spoke up. He said, look, you don't understand, says to the doctor. He says, these people are Christians, and they trust the Lord, and they're not in denial. They know exactly what's happened, and you need to leave them alone. Thank the Lord for that chaplain. The doctor was not happy about that, but he didn't say anything more. He basically just gave us some literature to take home and read. He said, take this literature home and read it and see if it helps you. Just enough about that literature. We took it home. We read a couple of pages and threw it in the trash immediately. It was just the most despairing thing you ever want to read about how people are angry and hurt and mad. And this never should have happened to them. They deserved better. And some were poems that were like that. Just absolute despair. And all you could say is, this is just horrible, the way lost men. Look at life, death, and God, you know? Just horrible. Well, we got to put, they put little Steven in the very box he'd be buried in. You know, you don't need a casket, or at least at that time you didn't need a casket for that. It was just a little bigger than a shoebox and sealed up. And so we took Steven back to our mobile home, the one that we'd always dreamed of bringing him home to in the hospital. Got to take him in. Not the way we wanted to, but took them in. And that was that story. God was very merciful. People were so kind. People gave a lot of money to help. you know, at that time we didn't need the money and so we just bought church songbooks. That's when we got our first Trinity Hymnals here. Just put it all into the Trinity Hymnal Fund, you know. And these aren't the ones, that was not the Baptist edition. So every once in a while you'll see one that's not the Baptist edition because it wasn't out yet. It hadn't been created yet. So we had Trinity hymnals, and no longer were we just had about 15 songs from our songbook that we could actually sing with good conscience. Now we had a plethora of songs we were able to sing. And so we used the rest of the money to buy a headstone. And Stephen was buried out at Bellevue Cemetery. We go visit occasionally to see him, maybe three, four times a year at least. A lot more I can say about that, but there is another part to the story that I want to tell you about trusting God. And Loma Linda, I just have nothing but good to say about them. Such kind people. That doctor was trying his best. He just was wrong. But mostly nurses that were so kind, so helpful. And the staff there was helpful. Even the financial staff was helpful. Eventually, you got to pay the bill, right? And the bills can be pretty high. Our insurance was 80-20 insurance. So we were going to be responsible for 20% of the bill. And it's not going to sound like a lot. Well, it is a lot, even today, $200,000 was the bill. And we'd have to pay 20% of that, $40,000. But I ran it out on figures of what it is today. It's almost $700,000 today. And you also have to factor in, which I didn't, it costs a lot more today to go to the hospital than it did back then. So to us and our small salary, we were looking at a bill that seemed to be $40,000 then were just incredible. It'd be well over $100,000. 150 or more today. Probably more than that. Not just the inflation. The inflation got it up to 120, our part of the bill. And then who knows how much the doctor would charge. But anyway, that was the bill. So I'll just use the numbers that are real numbers. $200,000 in 1983. And after our insurance paid off, we'd be on the line for $40,000. And of course, Loma Linda put in the money. called me and said, your insurance hasn't paid yet. I said, I'm very, very sorry. They said, we got good news. The Crippled Children's Foundation is going to pay off most of your bill. But the insurance has to pay first. They can't do anything until the insurance pays. So, okay, you know. And it was near the beginning of the year, so we had a lot of hope. But February turned into March and turned into April, turned into, you know, boom, boom, boom. I don't even know what month it finally was. But the insurance still had not paid. You know, so what happened next was rather incredible. Many of you know Pete Tiafilo. You know, Pete Tiafilo, good man here, worked so many years. Worked in the insurance agent, worked as an insurance agent for a while along with other things that he did do. He said, we need to go down there. And so I called my agent, and he agreed to go down there too. It was a California Life based in Los Angeles. And so we decided we'd go down there and find out in person what was happening, because on the phone we were getting nowhere. Loma Linda was getting nowhere. And we had to do something. Unfortunately, during that time period, crippled children called Loma Linda and said we ran out of funds. So because our insurance didn't pay off, we weren't going to get any help. And we lost it because they would not pay. That's the truth of the matter. So we arrived at a skyscraper down in Los Angeles. And there we are. We go inside, California Life. The receptionist, very rude, very unhelpful, tried to get rid of us. But we refused to go, the three of us. I'm just steadfastly going to tell the story, going to tell her what happened. And we did. And you could actually see her face change as she found out what had happened. She just kind of all of a sudden being instead of being rude and, and angry, she was still angry. Still angry, but she said, Come with me, you know, so we followed her into an elevator. So we go into the elevator. And it's real uncomfortable, you can imagine. The three of us and her, and she's angry, and we don't know what's going on. And we get out, the thing opens up. And it doesn't open up into a hallway, it opens up into a big room. That's probably about, oh. maybe a quarter the size of this room, with just a guy behind a desk. And the elevator opens right up into that room. And we were way up. We didn't realize that. And the man behind the desk gets up and says, what are you doing? And she says, these guys have something you need to hear. And then she, we stepped out and she went down. You know? And pretty uncomfortable, you can imagine. But we told him the story of what had happened to us. And now we lost the chance to get the Crippled Children's Foundation to help because you guys didn't pay. And you gotta pay. You know, you owe it. You know you do. That's not the words, but you know what I mean. Just telling the story. And you could see him change. You could see a heart of compassion come out in the guy. And then we realized, as he started to tell us his story, the company's going broke. You know, we're going to go out of business. He says, you'll get paid because when we go bankrupt, the state of California will take over and the insurance company will take over. And so Loma Linda will get their money, you know. And he said, you know, we're just not going to be around much longer. We know what then this is what was interesting. He basically just sharing his heart and talking I mean, you know, he says what we did was illegal We couldn't hold on to the money like that and you could sue us for triple damages and that's when he stopped And said well, but if you if you ever try to do that, I'll deny I ever said it, you know He caught himself at that point, you know anyway, he picked up the phone and and called down and said, release the check to Loma Linda for the marketer, baby. And of course, we weren't sure if he was just bluffing, picking up the phone. You could pick up the phone and pretend to say something like that. But sure enough, he did. And the check was cut, and Loma Linda was paid. And that problem was solved. So now we had to go back to Loma Linda. They were very happy to get their money. But we still owed about $40,000. So we looked at our finances and told them, the best we can do, we'll pay you $100 a month for ever. And they said, we don't want $100 a month. I said, well, that's all I can do. We don't have any money like that. They said, well, there is something you can do. I said, you can go apply to Medi-Cal. I said, I don't want to apply to Medi-Cal. I don't like that. And they said, well, we want our money. And you're going to have to pay us $40,000 or apply to Medi-Cal. She was actually being kind. I know, that sounded harsh. But she was actually being kind. It didn't seem kind at the time, but it was. I said, I don't want to go to Medi-Cal. She says, look, Medi-Cal is only going to pay us about maybe 25% of what you owe. But they will pay that. And we'll have our money. And we'll be happy. And you'll be happy. You didn't ruin your life. Just do that. He said, okay, we'll do that. So against my will, but I believe in the will of the Lord, I went to Medi-Cal and applied. only to find out again. That's just an amazing story. Providence says it was the last day that he qualified for Medi-Cal. Had I waited a day, it would not have been able to happen. I suppose. They said it was the last day. So we had no problem qualifying. And when it was said and done, we had a co-pay. This time, the co-pay was down to $1,400. Okay, $1,400. We went back and they said, you will only owe $1,400 as long as the doctors all accept your Medi-Cal. They don't have to accept it. That's up to them. But at that time, they gave you stickers. So we had a little book of stickers. And so we had to go to each doctor. There was about five of them. And find them there, and then give the sticker. And if they accepted the sticker, then their bill was paid. And so that's what we did. So we went to the first three doctors, they all accepted the sticker. We didn't see the doctors, of course, we saw the receptionist and everything. And then we went to the next doctor and the receptionist said, oh wait, I need to go talk to the doctor. I don't know. Uh-oh. Sounded like trouble, you know. Sounded like trouble, but it wasn't trouble. Doctor was very kind. He remembered our situation and such like that. And not only took the sticker, but donated $400 to the cause, you know, out of his own pocket, which is very kind. And we were thrilled. And then we went to the next doctor. And he donated $300 out of his pocket after taking the sticker. So that's $700 now we have, knocked off our $1,400 bill. And I forgot to tell you, but the lady in the reception at Loma Linda told us, look, if you pay this thing off in three months, we'll knock it down to $1,100 instead of $1,400. Whoa. Now we got $700 and we can pay it off. I know it's gonna be hard, but we can do it. We can pay this off. You know, we're just thrilled. You know, we're gonna pay this off. We're gonna just double down extra hard and get that $400 out before the three months is over and this is done. You know, we were excited. And you can imagine. So we came back, it was a Wednesday, we had Wednesday night prayer meeting that night. I came back and told everybody what happened. And of course, everybody was was thrilled and praising the Lord for his goodness in the situation. And, you know, We came to church on Sunday, and we had a back table back there where Brendan is sitting. Used to be a table there, Brendan. The auditorium was set up a little differently back then. And after church, we went back there, and there was an envelope with our name on it with $400 in it, four $100 bills. And it was paid. It was paid. It was anonymous. So we still don't know to this day who gave it, didn't want to find out. They wanted to give it, and honestly, they just wrote a note saying, have fun paying off your bill. And we did. And like I said, we learned to trust God. And we learned compassion. And we learned that God still works in people's hearts, to actually see people's hearts change. Not all of them, like that doctor, his heart didn't change as far as we could see. But you could see that Stephen's doctor was touched by everything. The chaplain understood. We understood that, you know, there was the doctors that were kind enough to to give instead of not only just take less than what their bill would be, but then to give you money on top of it. That's kind of an incredible thing, you know, and they didn't really know us, you know, but that's what God did for us. And that's a story I've told before. So you've heard it. I know, but some of you haven't. And I was a fill-in today, so I thought it was a good time to tell that story because I told it up in Corsegold. I want to thank Matt and Doug because they did Yeoman's work this summer. when they were called upon to do so, when we did have to have some providential situations that caused us to rework the schedule a little bit, they stepped up and did extra duty, and we appreciate that so much. It's the Lord's work here.