SAMUEL G. TOOMA, AUTHOR
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CHAPTER 5. TESTIMONIALS (CONT'D)1/13/2021 In today's post, I include the last 3 of my testimonial stories. My testimonial stories are events in my life which I relate to people that I am witnessing. Witnessing is when I tell people how my life has changed once I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. In today's first story, I present the last of the several times that I had a direct interaction with the Holy Spirit. The second story is an event which happened during a reunion I attended with my old Naval Oceanographic Office Buddies that I worked with for many years. The third story shows how powerful prayer can be. I hope you enjoy the retelling of these events which I have been blessed with.
HOLY SPIRIT FOR THE FOURTH TIME. I am not sure when this next event took place, but it was in the summer of about 2005. My daughter Monica, my son-in-law, Bob Smoot, and my 3 grandchildren, Karlen, Rowan, and Liana were visiting us for a week from Austin, TX. This was always a special treat for us when our Austin family visited us. During this visit, about mid-week, a bizarre thing happened to me. I had to go to the Bi-Lo grocery store for a few items. I backed out of my driveway and headed down the street. I saw Monica walking back to our house from the beach. She had gone there to take photos of the wildflowers growing in the sand dunes. I put my window down and asked her if she needed anything from the store. She smiled and said, “No. I’m good”. I said OK, closed my window, and began my short drive to Bi-Lo, I went about 10 feet or so, and a wave of love for Monica swept over me. I can’t describe how intense this feeling of love for her was. The next thing I remember was that I was parked in the Bi-Lo parking lot, and I was crying actual tears. I do not remember driving there. I was totally shaken. The rest of the day and that night, I kept thinking about what had just happened to me. I knew that my love for her was no stronger than what I have for my youngest daughter, Stephanie, or for my wife, Sylvia, or for my mother for that matter. What was this all about? The next morning, I was lying in bed still thinking about this. Then, the voice mentioned in the 3 stories presented earlier in my memoirs, that of the Holy Spirit, said to me these words, “Now you have some idea of the love the Father has for each and every one of you”. These are the exact words I heard. I remember them clearly. It is interesting to note that the words “some idea” were used and not the word “know”. Why did the Holy Spirit give me this message? To this day, I have no idea. The message is certainly an important one, but why me? One thing that I do know however, is that this episode has been the last time the Holy Spirit has communicated with me in this way. Of course, I am constantly being given guidance by Him daily on what I should or should not do. But the guidance is more of a feeling than the loud, clear messages given to me by the Holy Spirit as described in the stories I have posted. THE NAVOCEANO REUNION (2013). In October 2013, my buddies from my early days at the Naval Oceanographic Office had a reunion on Hilton Head. My Pueblo friends, Dunnie Tuck and Harry Iredale, were the primary planners of this event. We rented a large 7-bedroom, 7-bath house to accommodate the approximately 20 people who attended. Sylvia and I housed 2 of the couples in our home which was 2 streets away. During the first night, I was inside taking pictures when I noticed that the men were all outside on a porch talking and drinking beer. I went outside to join them. As soon as I walked onto the porch, one of the guys said, “Here’s Sam. He’ll remember that joke”. Well, I had been the master of the “dirty” joke in my NAVOCEANO days. But now I looked at them and said, “I’m sorry guys, but I don’t talk like that anymore”. As they say, the silence that followed was deafening. I explained to them that since moving to Hilton Head, my Christian values had grown, and I just stopped using foul language or telling dirty jokes. The next day, several of the guys and their wives came up to me to tell me that they were believing Christians and were thrilled to know that I was one as well. At the evening meal, we asked the others if they would mind if we asked the Lord to bless the food for our use. No one objected, and we thanked God for providing us with the food we were about to enjoy. We said the blessing for each meal that followed. An interesting note to this story is that the people who first approached me were Dunnie Tuck and his wife, Vi. Dunnie, as you now know, was one of the 2 civilian oceanographers onboard the USS Pueblo when it was captured by N. Korea (the other being Harry Iredale). Vi told me that during the 11 months of captivity in N. Korea, Dunnie had been the spiritual leader of the American captives. In this role, he kept the morale of the men up and helped them get through their terrible ordeal. I had no idea of the spiritual strength of Dunnie Tuck. THE POWER OF PRAYER (2005). In January of 2005, my father suddenly became seriously ill. He was, at that time, living in the same nursing home as my mother. He had gone into a coma and was unresponsive. I went to the hospital to visit him and to talk to his doctor about his condition. The doctor gave me the bad news that my dad’s kidneys had shut down and that he had 3 or 4 more days to live. Palliative care was the only thing we could do until the end. Now, I had the unenviable task of telling my mother that her husband of almost 65 years was going to die. I had no idea of how I was going to do this. My head was swimming in confusion. I went to Burger King to have lunch and to try to sort this dilemma out of how I could break this news to my mother. I came up with no clear plan. I left Burger King to go back to the nursing home to tell my mother what she had to know. On my way to her room, I had to pass by the nurse’s station. The nurse at the station saw me and asked, “How is Mr. Tooma doing”? I started to tell her, but my voice broke, and I could not speak. The nurse saw this and immediately rushed to me to give me a hug and say how sorry she was. How was I going to tell my mother the bad news when I could not even tell it to, essentially, a stranger? My mother’s room was near the end of a long hall, and I began my walk down this hall. As I walked, I began to pray for help. I prayed for the words I would need so that my mother would understand and accept the situation without breaking down. Somehow, when I walked into her room, I had a new-found feeling of confidence of what I had to do. I don’t remember my words, but I do know that my mother took the news calmly. Somehow, I had delivered my message in a way that she accepted without breaking down. How did I go from a man who could not even talk to a stranger about what I had to do to being a man who was cool, calm, and collected? All within a few seconds! The only answer that I have is the power of prayer.
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May 2021
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