Memo #23 ( blogged June 1, 2014 )
April 1, 2002
From: Richard M. Pratt (Dad, Grandfather, friend etc.)
Re: Miracles
February, Tuesday 26, 2002 I was diagnosed by Dr. McKay Platt as having numerous cancerous tumors in my bladder. He removed them Friday March 1 with the declaration that he was 98% sure that I would need further surgery and lose my bladder and other good news.
However in a Priesthood blessing by Roger, Chad, Nelson and Gibb I was promised complete recovery. The next day my brother Leroy gave me a brother’s blessing with the same promise. Also the family and some friends combined in fasting and prayers on my behalf which were muchly appreciated.
When I came out from the operation I promised my five sweet daughters not to worry the Doctor’s forecast would not come to pass. And if it did hallelujah! I’ve got to get out of this life someway.
Carolyn stayed overnight with me. Fixed a nice breakfast and went home. I vacuumed the carpets did some washing and worked a couple of hours in the shop.
30 April 1981 about 9 P.M. I was operated on for a ruptured appendix again by the power of the Priesthood and medical skills I lived although it was doubtful for three days in intensive care.
Two weeks before Mother’s demise I was operated on for intestinal blockage and again my life was saved by faith and medical skills.
I have also been healed by the power of the Priesthood when medical help was not available. (Look up one time in Grandpa’s book page: 204!)
June 6, 1958, at age 45, I experienced a major heart attack, a massive coronary thrombosis which killed 1/3 of my heart. The Doctor said I couldn’t live till morning. I was healed instantly by the Power of God thru the administration of the Holy Priesthood. And have never had a recurrence although I have lived an extremely active life. While the Doctor warned me never to exert myself physically again.
These close calls with death have caused me to run back thru my memory for 90 years and I have literally lived 90 years of miracles and survived to this point only because my Heavenly Father has decreed it.
Following are some near death experiences that have happened to me.
My life has been a life of miracles not a few but very many. Here are some that I can remember. I am sure I have also forgotten many.
My Patriarchal blessing promised me when I was 15 years old that my life would be prolonged to a very old age.
I started life by being born dead. The doctor just dropped my lifeless body and went to work to stop the bleeding that was rapidly claiming the life of my 17 year old mother. The faith of my Grandmother and my Father finally coaxed my spirit to enter the body. With this start I will barely mention other miracles. (I may give details later if anyone is interested.)
I have drowned twice.
Twice wicked men have tried to murder me because I was a Mormon.
Seven times I have fallen from roof tops, all of them more than ten feet. And during the many years of professional pruning, thinning and picking fruit before dwarf trees we used 16 foot ladders from which I fell often also fell out of the trees. I don’t know how many times. Statistics show that 50% of falls from 10 feet or more are fatal and the survivors usually suffer broken bones. I have never had a bone broken.
The second summer we were married I sprayed fruit trees for over 90 days averaging 12 hours a day every day with two deadly poisons, “arsenic and lead.” I was literally soaked in it and it often ran into my mouth. And I suffered no ill affects. I was paid the grand sum of 25 cents an hour.
I fell from a tree, my heavy pruning shears following hit me on the top of the head and the sharp point should have penetrated my skull but it didn’t however I lost 3 pints of blood and was on the edge of death before I was able to get help.
In my first 45 years of farming using horses, I have had every conceivable accident. I have been bitten, kicked, stomped on, dragged, in fearsome runaways, bucked off and had one 1000 pound horse fall down, roll over with me under and get back on its feet and I was still in the saddle.
Five times mad bulls have charged me and a miracle each time saved me. In one instance the bull killed my horse by literally disemboweling him. Then just as his horns were touching my stomach an unseen power picked me up and set me atop of a 15 foot high hay stack some 100 feet away.
Five times I have stepped on or sat down on rattle snakes. (They don’t always rattle) and escaped with out being bitten.
A swarm of black wasps attacked me and before my head swelled into one hideous unrecognizable mass I counted more than 50 stings. One sting can be fatal.
In the islands I was stung by scorpions and bitten by four inch long centipedes.
A rabies infected wild jack rabbit charged me and I was only able to escape, by you guessed it, another act of God.
A vicious dog leaped for my throat without warning.
I was struck by a car and ended up on the hood looking thru the windshield at a hysterical driver, I wasn't even bruised.
I was accidentally catapulted out of a hay loft turned a somersault and landed on my feet some 15 to 20 feet below.
Standing on top of a heavy wagon load of hay the horses bolted into a dead run jerking the load out from under me. I went into a somersault and landed on my feet still holding my pitch fork. My buddy fell off the front end and both iron wheels ran over him. We buried him.
At least once evil spirits have tried to kill me and nearly succeeded. In the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s First Vision, “Thick darkness gathered around me and bound my tongue so that I could not speak, it seemed for a time as if I was doomed to utter destruction.” This was not imaginary but very real and extremely frightening.
I’ve suffered a ruptured appendix and should have died, also a bowel blockage and now a cancer operation.
In all of these numerous bouts with death a doctor was only involved a few times. They just weren't available. You lived or you died.
Now if this sounds like boasting, I am not boasting in me for I am nothing with out God. But I AM BOASTING IN MY GOD who has preserved my life to this point.
“And when I consider that God, his son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin.
When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, To take me home, what joy shall fill my heart! Then I shall bow in humble adoration and there proclaim, “My God, how great thou art!” (From the Hymn, “How Great Thou Art”)
My strength is as nothing, but with God I can do all things and have done many things and hope to do more things in preparing for the Second Coming of our Savior Jesus Christ. In preparing us all for that great and very dreadful day. Dreadful only to the unprepared.
BECOME PREPARED!
LOVE,
Dad, Grandpa etc. Richard M. Pratt
