Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2015 i Mysterious Ways

Before I was an editor, I was an astronaut. As a kid I piloted an imaginary rocket ship constructed with blankets and chairs in the basement, with a Lite-Brite for a control panel and walkie-talkies to contact Mission Control. When I was 11 years old, Mom and Dad sent me to Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Centerin Huntsville, Alabama. To me the journey was just as mysterious, thrilling and terrifying as space flight—the farthest I’d ever traveled, the longest I’d spent away from home. What I remember most from my days in the space program isn’t how much we learned about space, but the things we learned about life on Earth. As a mission specialist, my role was to study how things changed once removed from the…

The Canadian soldiers found him crossing the border from Germany to the Netherlands. A 25-year-old Dutch ex-prisoner of war named Henk. He’d walked all the way from a Nazi labor camp in Hamburg. Covered in flea bites. A skeleton in rags, like most of the freed prisoners roaming the countryside in the last days of the war. Lost, dazed, not sure he had a home to return to. They took him to a cottage in the recently liberated city of Enschede. It was empty save for a lanky soldier writing letters at a desk. At the sight of Henk, he dropped his pen, ran to the kitchen and soon returned with a steaming plate of food. Henk’s eyes widened. Bully beef and potatoes. In the camp, he’d survived on boiled…

The waitress at Tucci's in Dublin, Ohio, didn't recognize the pro golfer seated at her table. There were a lot of golfers in town for last June's PGA Tour event at the Muirfield Village Golf Club. Then she heard that this golfer, Erik Compton, was a two-time heart-transplant recipient. That got her attention. At nine years old, Erik, a Miami native, was diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, a life-threatening condition. For a kid who lived for sports, the news was devastating. Erik had his first heart transplant at 12. He took up golf as a slower-paced way of feeding his competitive spirit. He took it up with a vengeance, becoming a top junior golfer. But spells of fatigue held him back from qualifying for the PGA Tour. In September 2007, Erik…

"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Henry H. G. Mungle, United States Army, for gallantry and intrepidity in action against an opposing armed force while serving as Crew Chief of a security platoon, 560th Military Police Company, 93rd Military Police Battalion in the 2nd Military Region, Republic of Vietnam. On the morning of June 12, 1971, at approximately 0900 hours, a truck convoy was attacked by an NVA company. Sergeant Mungle, com mander of a V-100 armored vehicle, quickly directed his vehicle driver to go to the rescue of the convoy.... Sergeant Mungle's heroic actions in first thwarting the enemy attack, and then risking his life by shielding a wounded soldier with his body, administering…

Frankly, I was totally baffled. What on earth were we doing here, surrounded by at least a hundred strangers? And why hadn't I asked myself that question before? Not that my husband, Jeff, and I felt unwelcome. These were perfectly nice people milling around the campground pavilion. It's just that we didn't know a single one of them. Well, we knew one. Ken. Ken was an old friend, Jeff's roommate before we got married, a big, warm, demonstrative guy known for his bear hugs. They could practically lift you off your feet. One Sunday after church, he charged right over to give us each a big squeeze. Jeff dodged—his back had been acting up again—and Ken understood. "I was hoping I'd see you two today," he said. "I wanted to…

The odds of a self-replicating peptide (a building block of life) arising from the primordial ooze: 1 in 1040 The odds of every one of your ancestors reproducing successfully: 1 in 104,500 The odds of your parents meeting and having children: 1 in 40,000,000 The odds of you living in the United States: 1 in 23 The odds of the Pilgrims meeting Squanto, the only fluent English speaker in the Wampanoag tribe: 1 in 12,000 The odds of your child’s favorite cartoon character being a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: 1 in 233 The odds of you being human instead of, say, an amoeba: 1 in 8,700,000 The odds of you being born exactly who you are, with your exact DNA: 1 in 102,640,000 The odds of you…

Durham, North Carolina Who says superheroes aren’t real? Check out Steve Voglezon, an army captain at Fort Bragg on his day off. That morning Steve threw on an old T-shirt and drove to Durham for a day of shopping. He came upon a gruesome scene on rural O’Kelley Chapel Road. A silver SUV and a red sedan had collided head-on. Steve heard the cries of passengers trapped inside and sprang into action. WTVD News reports that Steve dragged 59-year-old Mark Ricketts out of his burning SUV and ran to the sedan. The doors were jammed. Steve grabbed a fire extinguisher from another passerby, smashed the windows and pulled sexagenarians William and Kathleen Thompson to safety. Steve’s heroic actions earned him a Soldier’s Medal nomination. “I was just at the right…

The dream was so weird it made me laugh. I was in a room with colleagues from a former job, bent over some maps. “Shouldn’t you check on your child outside?” someone asked. I went out and found a little girl sitting in my car. Not my daughter, Meaghan, but in the dream I thought she was mine. It was freezing out and the little girl’s face was blue. I scooped her up and carried her inside. Everyone called the girl by name—a relief, since I didn’t know it. Suddenly my father’s voice boomed out: “If you can’t be in Vancouver, you might as well be in Belarus!” It was a strange way to start that January morning. My sister-in-law lived near Vancouver, but Belarus? Where did that come from?…

It was the wrong house, but I was going to stop anyway. Two months into my gig as a visiting nurse, my first real job out of college, I still couldn’t navigate Los Angeles County. My first patient of the day was waiting for me at an address somewhere in this neighborhood. An address I couldn’t find. I was so desperate I decided to just knock on someone’s door for help. Before I reached the front door, though, I heard a muffled noise coming from the closed garage. Was that…a car engine? My nurse’s instincts kicked in. I ran to the garage and hoisted the heavy door. Exhaust fumes billowed out. Inside the running car, a middle-aged man was slumped over the steering wheel. He’d locked the doors. I banged…

A July Wednesday in Tucson, Arizona, at the corner of Port Au Prince Place and Kolb Road, the modest home of Gloria and John Schmidt. At 5:00 a.m., John, a retired long-haul trucker, left for his new job, delivering bread for a bakery. It wasn’t his regular day, but the bakery had called the night before and asked him to come in. Gloria and John’s son, Don, an Army private home on leave, usually slept in. That day, he’d arranged to go on a police ride-along— his dream was to join the force. Scheduled to join officers on their first shift, he was out the door by 5:45. The morning commotion got Gloria up early. Her secretarial job didn’t start until 8:00. Around 6:45, she was checking on the laundry…

Dana Apple My 12-year-old Australian shepherd, Pearl, had developed a tumor. We had to risk surgery. I’d been going to the same veterinarian, Dr. Scott, for 11 years, and he promised to call me personally as soon as the surgery was over. Back home, I collapsed on the couch and rested my eyes. Like a scene from a movie, I saw a large, grassy field. Pearl ran around and turned to me with an ecstatic expression. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock: 1:30. My phone rang an hour later. Dr. Scott. Unfortunately, Pearl hadn’t made it through surgery. Toward the end of the week I called and asked for more details. Dr. Scott’s secretary confirmed that the vet had done everything he could for Pearl, working on…

I can’t explain why I was saved. Why another girl wasn’t. I’ve thought about it for 50 years. All I know is that evil tried to take me that night, and how close I was to being a killer’s next victim. It was early August 1965. Almost midnight. The Laundromat on the outskirts of town was deserted, my brown-and-white Buick the only car in the lot. Inside, rows of machines were dormant, their round glass doors flipped open. No Herman’s Hermits or Four Tops on the radio. Not at this hour. Just the sloshing of the washer I’d started. I leaned against a table and thumbed through a magazine. Fifteen minutes to go.… I washed my baby’s cloth diapers at that Laundromat every few nights, stopping in after my shift…

I jolted awake at one in the morning and burst into tears. The nightmare had felt terrifyingly real. My best friend, Tracy, was dead. It’s not true, I reminded myself. But a feeling of intense grief lingered. Tracy was my “birthday sister,” both of us born on March 5. We’d been friends ever since we met, during flight-attendant training 14 years earlier. Even after I transferred across the country, our bond remained strong. We hadn’t caught up in about a month, though. I need to hear her voice. In the morning I dialed her number. We laughed and chatted. Nothing seemed wrong with her at all. It felt silly to even mention the terrible dream, so I didn’t. Still, that uneasy feeling persisted. I couldn’t shake it. A few days…

We have a question. Something that’s been nagging at us for quite a while. Every time we edit a Mysterious Ways story about a miracle in the midst of tragedy, we can’t help but wonder: Can our darkest moments actually illuminate our lives—even provide a healing of sorts? Jason Padgett was an aimless 31-year-old. A college dropout living in Tacoma, Washington, selling futons at his dad’s furniture shop. He was bright, but had never lived up to his potential. He was no stranger to the party scene. A good time—that’s all he was after. Part of him yearned to settle down, take over the family business someday. But how would that ever happen if he spent all his nights drinking and chasing girls? One Friday night in September 2002, Jason’s…