Chapter 43

     My first day on the job in the cafeteria went well.  I had been assigned a position serving on the food line providing food selections directly to students as they passed by.

     I  met several other students that first day which I ended up working with and would do so through the first semester.  One student in particular worked beside me every day and was full of energy and loved to chat.  She had a great attitude toward life and the most wonderful smile you ever saw.  She was raised by her mom and talked about her often.

     Every once in a while, I was able to share my Christian faith with her, but she didn’t seem much interested.  However, on a few occasions she asked me about specific issues of my faith.  It seemed to me that at least she thought about it some.

     The semester ended and I did not see her again till one day when I was walking through the Student Union Cafeteria and heard someone yelling my name.  I looked around and saw it was my worker friend from the cafeteria standing up calling my name and waving at me to come over.

     I took a step toward her, looked up, and then it happened.  Instantly instead of seeing her in the flesh, she showed up as a skeleton talking to me.  This was an enormous shock to me.  I knew it was a vision but thought, oh my God, I am going to faint.  I am going down.

     There was a post right next to me on my right and I grabbed hold of it.  I was hoping that if I blacked out, it would only be for a few seconds and the post might help keep me from falling.  I did go black for a few seconds, and when I came to, the skeleton had come over to in front of me where I was standing. 

     I looked down at the floor trying to shake the vision, but it didn’t work.  I looked down again, but it still didn’t work.  I took a deep breath and looked down and then back up and saw her and not the skeleton vision.  She was asking me if I was ok with a very concerned look on her face.  I told her that I thought I just needed to get some air and left.

     As I was walking out of the Student Union, Holy Spirit spoke to me saying, “Please return to her”.  I responded stating that I just couldn’t deal with visions like that, and walked on regretfully.

     Less than a week later, I was going to my first class of the morning when I looked across the road at a sign board with a pink flyer on it.  Holy Spirit asked me to go read it.  I was running late for class to do it right then but committed to swing back by after class and read it.  I made it to the steps of my classroom’s building but knew I needed to go back right then and read the pink flyer.

     Upon returning to the message board,  I read the pink flyer.  It was a notice announcing my cafeteria worker friend’s memorial service to be held within a few days.  I left without going to class that day.

     There was a Men’s Co-op in Bozeman where I had rented a room when Lori had moved to Iowa a few months before we got married.  I lived in a basement room, which did not have a covered ceiling, and I could see the floor joists above me. 

     One night, I was lying awake looking up at the floor joists above me and I slipped into a vision.  In the vision, I saw myself with a drill, boring holes in each floor joist.  The vision concluded, with me a bit confused as to what that was about.

     Years later, after moving back to Bozeman, a plumber and a member of our church called me one day, and asked if I would help him on a plumbing project, he was behind on it and was in serious need of some quick help as he was getting ready to leave on vacation.

     He informed me that someone had purchased the old Men’s Co-op and was turning it back into a single-family dwelling.  I arrived the next morning and he briefed me on what he wanted me to do.  He was running water lines and needed me to bore the holes in the floor joists to run the pipe through.

     I stood there listening thinking, remembering my vision and thinking,  I can’t believe this is happening.  At the end of his explanation, he asked me if I understood what he was saying.  All I could do was reply, “What a boring job”.  It took a second for all listening to get my dry humor, but they all laughed when they did.  My dry since of humor at its best.

     I found a part time job transferring Ryder Trucks around the state.  This paid really good money, and I got to travel all over Montana seeing the state.  Often, I would go to pick up a truck and it would not have enough gas to get back to Bozeman.  Short on cash myself, I would just pray the truck in.

     This had been an all too frequent habit of mine when driving my car.  Always playing it too close and asking God to bail me out.

     On one occasion, I stopped just west of Butte as I was running much later than I thought I would be.  I called Lori to let her know I was running late, was on the other side of Butte, and would be home in a couple of hours.  I was out of cash again and getting pretty low on gas, but I took off as usual praying in the gas.

     A few minutes later, I was approaching Butte when all of a sudden, I looked around and could not figure out where I was.  I kept looking for a sign, or landmarks to tell me where I was, when I saw the town of Belgrade off to my left.  I was totally shocked.

     It just did not seem this could be real.  Had I driven ninety miles in over an hour without remembering having done so at all?  I kept going the rest of the way to Bozeman, about ten more miles.  I parked the truck, got my car, and went home, about five miles away.

     When I got home, as I walked in the door, it startled Lori as she was shocked to see me.  She exclaimed that I had tricked her.  I asked how so.  She stated that she thought she had a couple of hours before I would be home after my call, but as I had taken only thirty minutes, she thought I had pulled a prank on her 

     A month or so later the owner of the rental shop where I worked transferring Ryder Trucks, called me yelling at me. He was so upset I couldn’t even understand what he was saying.  I asked him to slow down a bit.  He did and explained they had been trying to figure out how I was draining the gas from the trucks after dropping them off. 

     He stated that the last thirty trucks or so didn’t have enough gas in them to even start up in the morning.  He thought for sure I was pulling a prank on them, and they were trying to figure out how I was doing it, without leaving any evidence of how.

     I explained to him that many times, they would not have enough gas in them to get me back to Bozeman, I was low on cash, and I had prayed them in.  I apologized for not praying for enough gas so they would start up in the morning though.  He was a bit unnerved but started providing funds in advance for our trips.