Chapter 99

     Lori and I took a trip to New York City to celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary in February 2001.  We stayed at the Algonquin Hotel and planned to see the play Les Misérables on Broadway.  One of the ShareValue partners wanted me to meet up with a friend of his who was a third tier Wall Street guy known for helping companies acquire capital.  I agreed to meet him at the hotel in between outings with Lori.

     Jim Ford was a total New Yorker type guy who loved the city.  We talked for a while in the lobby as I explained the essence of ShareValue.  By the end of the meeting Jim agreed to help us raise capital. 

     On my first morning back in Kansas City I got a call at five o’clock in the morning from Jim explaining how he had been waiting for two hours before calling me.  He gave me his Bible verse for the day along with a mini sermon.  He loved sharing Jesus, and he would call me every morning to share his inspiration or thoughts of the day. 

     Jim started introducing me to venture capital firms and angel investors.  Our plan was well liked, and some key potential investors were lined up promising to keep an eye on us as we grew.  We just needed to finish development and launch sales. 

     On one trip I took to New York, Jim and I had a very productive couple of days.  I was to leave the next day to go back to Kansas City when Jim came to me and very soberly asked if I would pray for him.  All he said was that he wasn’t feeling very well.  We sat down to pray, and Jim took the lead.  As I followed along, I had two visions.  Jim paused and looked at me, handing the prayer time off to me. 

     Letting him know that I sometime get visions and that I had two while he was praying, I asked him if he minded if I share them.  He agreed, seeming to be eager to hear me out. 

     The first vision showed on his voice box in a three-dimensional color what looked like the Community Chest from the Monopoly Game.  The second vision was of a bone that had a crack in it.  A shark was sticking its nose into the crack attempting to widen it, going backwards then taking a run at it again and again.  Jim asked me if I could draw it and when I did, he started to tear up. 

     Jim exclaimed, “That is my neck bone!”  He went on to explain how he had wrecked his truck a couple of years ago, got thrown from the windshield and broke his neck.  He had walked out of the hospital within 90-days after refusing surgery due to the risk that he would be paralyzed for life.  What had been otherwise a miraculous recovery had left him with a debilitating condition.  He had been warned of the risk that it wouldn’t take much to do further damage to his condition and he was suffering increasingly very harsh headaches.  Sometimes spending days in bed. 

     Jim explained that he was to the point where he needed to have surgery, or the pain was such he wanted to kill himself.  He said he had prayed repeatedly but he felt no release from God to have the surgery.  He thought he might not be hearing right and so asked me to ask the Lord about what he is to do. 

     The pain he was in showed but I was taken aback by his request.  He pleaded and I agreed to ask the Lord on his behalf.  In an almost immediate response, the Lord told me to “Tell him this, I have preserved him for a day, and in that day, he will know it.”  

     My first thought was, “I can’t tell him this.”  

     I inquired again and the Holy Spirit repeated, “Tell him this, 'I have preserved him for a day, and in that day, he will know it.’”

     Jim looked at me and exclaimed, “You've heard something, tell me.”  

     I prefaced by asking him not to use me as his only source and he agreed.  When I told him what I had heard, it was like a million pounds melted away.  He smiled and said, “I can live with this.” 

     The property had an Open House sign out front and I pulled in to take a look.  When I walked through the front door, the Second Heaven opened up.  I proceeded through the house looking into every room.  The harsh thing was that everywhere I looked; I saw the house on fire.  

     As I was leaving walking out the front door, I looked back at the stone fireplace and its chimney saying to myself, “If I didn’t know better, it looks to me like this house will burn to the ground with nothing left except for the stone fireplace and chimney.” 

     A week later I was driving by the property where lots of fire trucks, police cars, and other emergency vehicles were in the yard.  I slowed my truck down attempting to take a look at the house.  

     Finally, I got a view and verified my suspicions.  The house had totally burned to the ground and the only thing left was the stone fireplace and its chimney out in the open. 

     There was a technology show in New York City at the Javits Center and one of the other ShareValue Executives and I decided to go.  I had worked with him at the internet company, and he knew the singing waitress, too.  

     We contacted her to let her know we would be in town.  We went to see her after attending the technology show and the restaurant where she worked was awesome.  She and her boyfriend invited us out that night to a Bavarian Restaurant which she claimed had the best beer in the world. 

     My partner and I played the tourist for the day and headed to catch the ferry to go see the Statue of Liberty.  On our way, we walked by the World Trade Center Towers. 

     Once in front of the World Trade Center, I stepped off the sidewalk into the grass closer to the World Trade Center Twin Towers.  At first, I was just looking at the ground level but when I got steady (I suffer from vertigo), I slowly looked all the way up the tower in front of me.  About halfway up the tower, I slipped into a vision.  All of a sudden, a ball of flame came out of the building.  I looked at the tower to my right, and the same thing happened to it. 

     Amazed at what I was seeing, I walked back and forth between the two buildings.  I was looking at the building in front of me when out of my peripheral vision, I saw the second building collapse.  Then the building in front of me collapsed, too.  They both came down in a pile of rubble. 

     A thought came to me that maybe other buildings around would come down, too, so I started looking at each building close by to see if anything would happen.  When I looked slightly to the left of the first building, I saw in the distance another building had come down.  I kept looking but no additional buildings came down that I could see. 

     The feeling was that it was over, and I said to myself, “If I didn’t know better, these three buildings are all going to be destroyed and come down.”  

     The vision then broke and I could see the buildings standing there again.  I slowly looked up and slipped into another vision.  A sign was hung between the two buildings that read, “Target”.  I looked down and the vision ended. 

     About that time my partner asked me if I wanted to go up to the top.  That terrified me and I declined.  We left and went to see the Statue of Liberty. 

     Returning from the Statue of Liberty, a man with an anarchist spirit getting off the ferry shouted out, “I want to see fire from the sky come down on this city.”  We chuckled a little at him, but I caught myself and asked the Lord if there was anything I could do for the man.  He responded saying, “You can tell him he will live to see the day when that will happen.”  That shocked me and I just kept on going without addressing the man. 

     We met up with our singing waitress and her boyfriend and had an awesome dinner and the best beer in the world.  I rarely drink more than half a beer and I drank two. 

     A few weeks before we went on our trip, I had had a dream.  In the dream, I was standing at what seemed to be a train station, but the cars looked like subway cars.  The waitress was there with her boyfriend, and I was saying goodbye to them getting ready to board. 

     I was worried about them and asked them if they were going to be ok.  They assured me they would be fine, and she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.  The dream ended.  I had never shared a dream with her before but felt prompted to call her and tell her this one.  It meant nothing to her though. 

     My partner and I knew it was going to be a late night and had checked out of our hotel planning to go directly from dinner to the airport.  Our waitress friend and her boyfriend offered to see us to the subway station.  

     The station was above ground and saying our goodbyes, I realized I was in the place of my dream.  Looking up at her, she could see what I was thinking and leaned over to kiss my cheek.  I wondered if I should tell them about the World Trade Center Vision or not, but there really wasn’t enough time so we just left.