To Sabbath School teachers: This story is for Sabbath, April 16.

By Alfred C. Machona

After serving for 11 years as a literature evangelist, I received a scholarship to study to become a pastor at Solusi University in Zimbabwe.

However, four months before classes began, my wife, Fortunate, and I were injured badly in a car accident. Many miracles happened that I don’t understand to this day.

I don’t understand how my wife and I survived a head-on collision while seated in the front seat but our three passengers in the back didn’t make it.

I don’t understand why I am not paralyzed. When I started physical therapy exercises, the therapist asked, “Are you a praying man?”

“Yes, why?” I asked.

“The X-ray that I’m holding here shows you are supposed to be paralyzed from the neck down,” he said. “Normally, a person with an X-ray like this would be dead. I’m going to be very careful with you. I’m afraid.”

I don’t understand the quick arrival of the ambulance at the accident scene. The manager of a local gold mine was driving in a pickup truck directly behind our car, and he saw the accident. He immediately called a nurse who worked at the gold mine and asked her to come quickly with the mine’s ambulance.

I don’t understand how I received a church scholarship to study at Solusi just three months before the accident. Without the scholarship, my wife and I would not have received medical assistance, and we might have died. Our hospital bills amounted to U.S.$36,000, an enormous sum for Zimbabwe.

I don’t understand why the only orthopedic surgeon qualified to operate on my neck in Zimbabwe was available on the day of my emergency surgery. He had booked an airplane flight to France on the same day as the operation. He operated on me in the morning and caught his flight that afternoon.

I ask God, “Why did You spare us? We should have perished right on the spot.”

I have two possible answers. Perhaps my wife and I were not prepared spiritually to die, and God gave us another chance to be ready for Resurrection Morning. Or maybe God spared us because we still have work to do in His vineyard.

My prayer life has changed since the accident. I pray more often, and I ask God to give me strength to do good deeds all the time. I ask God to work on whatever weaknesses that I have so I am right with Him should I die at any moment.

I also ask God to help me not to lose the fire to do His bidding. I pray, “Whatever You want me to do in Your work, give me the strength and the zeal to do it.”

Sometimes I make mistakes, but I always go to God and say, “I’m sorry that I’ve done this. I cannot manage on my own. Give me strength.”

I pray that my relationship with God is good all the time. I pray, “Let me do what You want me to do. Help me not to lose fire.”

I don’t know what God did at the time of the accident on December 23, 2015. But I know hat I am still here — and I will serve God all my days.

Part of a 2015 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering went to Solusi University to double the size of its crowded cafeteria from 500 seats to 1,000. Thank you for your mission offerings that allow Adventist schools like Solusi to prepare pastors to proclaim Jesus’ power and soon return.