3 Relatively Modern Examples of Food and Water Miraculously Appearing

Disappearing food isn’t a miracle. It happens all the time – especially at night. In fact I can always tell when it’s happened again because I wake up with severe indigestion and lasagna noodles stuck to my pajama pants. The same thing happens with meat loaf, apple sauce and an edible Mexican ant larvae called Escamoles. That last one was in my fridge by accident.

Food appearing with no explanation in time of incredible need, on the other hand, can be considered heaven-sent. I’ve come across three such instances recently. All of which, if taken at the word of those speaking, are nothing short of awe-inspiring miracles.

The first happened on the Pioneer trek west. It was a tough road – more so if you were already sick when you loaded into the wagon. So it was for Mary Ann Mellor. She’d given birth to conjoined twins the day her ship was to leave Liverpool, England. The twins died and the doctor’s thought Mary Ann would too. A few days later she boarded the ship on a stretcher.

The super sick boat trip may have been the easier part of her journey:

“As part of the Martin handcart company, they faced many difficulties on the trail. Mary Ann had regained some of her strength, but was still weak enough she nearly gave up on many occasions. On one occasion, she did. She told her family she would go no further, kissed her children goodbye, and “sat down on a boulder and wept.” Again, Louisa chose to come to her mother’s aid. She told the family to go on without her, prayed that she and her mother would be able to catch up with the company without harm, and got off her knees and went to work. As she returned to her mother’s boulder, she found a pie in the road, which she gave to her mother to eat. They rested for a time, and then succeeded in rejoining the group. Louisa recounts that “many times after that, Mother felt like giving up and quitting, but then she would remember how wonderful the Lord had been to spare her so many times, and offered a prayer of gratitude instead.”” (http://ldswomenshistory.blogspot.com/2010/03/mary-ann-mellor-and-louisa-mellor-clark.html)

I’ve left a lot of pie scraps in roads when I’ve had to walk somewhere while I’m whole-pie hungry. Especially on those walks where I forgot my fork. Hundreds of pounds of pie crust and filling just strewn across dozens of sidewalks and intersections over the years. Several street sweepers have implored me to stop.

 An intact recognizable pie lying in the dirt on a wheel-rut road out of the country sounds like a miracle to me. Certainly the two women relayed in the story took it as such.  The pioneer company that’d just left likely didn’t have pie fixins on them, much less the time to make them. And if they did, and they wanted to feed this dying woman, wouldn’t it be better to leave it with the women rather than at some distance in the dirt and the dust? Keep in mind that this miracle was written down after the fact - after the two likely caught up to the wagons. When they wrote it down they still thought it was a miracle. Nobody in the wagon train said “Oh that’s our pie tin. Must have fallen out of the handcart.”

This sort of miracle happened again more recently too – to Elizabeth Smart. She was a young girl taken from her room against her will and forced to live in a tent with her captors for many months. This is part of her story:

“After going several days without water, she awoke in the middle of the night for no reason. Both captors were asleep and when she looked around she found a yellow cup filled to the brim with clean, cold water. There was no way her captors would have shared if they had found water, the nearest source of water was a grueling hike down and then back up, and by the time they got it back was never super cold and tasted like the plastic jugs used to haul it up. "Where did the water come from? I have no explanation other than the water came from God. I know we didn't have a drop of water in the camp.....Why did God do it? How did it happen? What was God trying to say? Would I have died without the water? Certainly not. As thirsty as I felt, and as terrible as it was, I was not teetering on the edge of a life­or­death situation. And I was not alone. Mitchell and Barzee needed water too. Mitchell wasn't going to stay up on the mountain and let us all die of thirst. Eventually he would have had to go down to the stream. So why did God send me the water? Because He loved me. And He wanted me to know. He wanted me to know that He was still near. He wanted me to know that He controlled the Earth and all the heavens, that all things were in His hands. And if He could move mountains, then he could do this thing for me. To Him it was a small thing­a terribly easy thing to do­but for me it was as powerful as if He had parted the sea. This experience reminded me once again that God had not deserted me. He was aware of my suffering and loneliness. And that assurance gave me hope. It helped me to keep my faith and gave me the strength that I needed to go on."” (http://whatimreadingmdw.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-story-elizabeth-smart-with-chris.html)

In the first case you have a pie showing up with no available explanation. Here you have a yellow cup brim-full of cold water appearing near Elizabeth in a soul-crushing time. So far these two things made me wonder; “If it is a heaven sent pie, who made it? Was it a heavenly baker? Did it disappear from a window sill somewhere nearby and then appear in the road. And the water – was it scooped from a heavenly stream? Did an angel deliver it? An earthly messenger? I could think of this kind of thing all day.

This third example, luckily, is a little more specific about the ‘how.’ It happened to W.W. Phelps. And to John P. Green. And to Rhoda Green. This one encompasses food and water. Here’s their story:

“While traveling to Far West, Brother Phelps became lost and needed to stay the night out on the prairie. He became hungry and his horse needed water. In the dark, he came upon a loaf of bread, wrapped in a white linen cloth which was held together by six pins. A man then appeared to Brother Phelps and guided him and the horse to water. The man then provided Brother Phelps with directions that would lead him back to Far West. Once in Far West, the prophet Joseph Smith asked Brother Phelps if anything peculiar happened to him on his way. After Brother Phelps related his experience to Joseph and John P. Green, Brother Green explained that an old man had approached his home the day before and told Sister Green that he had a friend who could use a loaf of bread. Brother and Sister Green gladly wrapped the loaf of bread and gave it to the man. Brother Phelps returned the white linen cloth and six pins to Brother Green. Joseph then smiled and said, “And you didn’t know that that was Moroni!”” (http://www.livingheritagetours.com/moroni-appeared-to-17-different-people)

You ever lost anything? You ever lost something that not even a seer stone can find? You put it somewhere and you know exactly where but somehow you never find it again. Would you be less mad if you knew it went to a good cause?

Maybe a good cause is exactly where it went.