One of the leaders of the Newbold Church Walkers group, Veselinka Becejac, shares one of her recent experiences where she felt God demonstrate His care once again…
“Every day as a Christian is an exciting new experience for me.”
On Saturday, 7th August 2016, our Newbold Church Walkers group began our 5 mile walk in Aldworth, Berkshire.
The weather was exceptional ? a hot 28 degrees Celsius ? and everyone in the group, consisting of 22 people, was enthusiastic.
My husband, Johnny, and I were leading the walk and were incredibly grateful for the weather and happy to introduce this new walk to everyone. This was a going to be a beautiful walk where not one house was to be seen anywhere – no cars, nothing to spoil the magic of us along with the nature.
The walk
The enormously long fields of ripe wheat surrounded us on both sides. Thanks to the farmers who allowed us walkers 2 feet with of passage through all the fields.
The cornfields were tall, lush and on the verge of being harvested.
We crossed fields of long grass where we saw many happy young calves pottering about near their mums and play fighting with their young cousins.
It was hot, friendly and, overall, we felt joyous.
The youngest walker was 4 year old Tomas, and the oldest was our group of walkers? mascot, the eternal youngster, Brian, who is a mere 95 years old.
It felt like such a great mix of generations, nationalities, occupations – all with a common interest to enjoy God?s great gift of the nature.
Almost 3 hours later, as is customary for the group, we sang our theme song ?God is so good?, followed by a prayer and a refreshing cup of mint tea without sugar (we are so good!), plus a chocolate digestive (we are not that good!), before parting ways to go home.
A call late at night
At 11 pm, I received a message from Andy, one of the walkers from earlier that day. Along with Andy, his wife, Yoko and their three beautiful girls, Hana, Mari and Sara, had accompanied us on the walk. On their way home, Yoko realised that she had lost her wedding ring on the walk!
Panic struck.
They had immediately turned their car around and retraced their walk until the light faded and they had to abandon the search. Feeling very upset, they were determined to repeat the walk the next day ? the whole 5 miles ? in order to try and find the ring!
They asked us for the maps so they could retrace the exact route, and Andy asked us to pray for a miracle.
Would you believe that there is any chance of finding a little ring in fields of wheat, corn, high grass, narrow paths, hills and vales?
Almost no chance of success
We prayed instantly.
We offered to go with Yoko and Andy and do the whole walk with them again, with the understanding that there would be almost no chance of success.
On the Sunday, the weather was still hot and sunny. We walked one behind the other for very long time on the narrow paths patiently looking and kicking the fallen wheat ? nothing.
After about an hour of searching, we came to one of two big farms. Here the path was very wide several metres wide. All of us criss-crossed the path many times pushing the very high grass down, concentrating as hard as possible. During all this time, we admitted that without specific help from above, we would stand absolutely no chance in finding it.
We spent a long time here and as you can imagine ? we found nothing.
Almost giving up
A good two hours passed and Yoko even started walking in front of us. In the end, she gave up and didn?t think it was possible to find it.
About 20 minutes before we completed the route, I saw what looked like a toy ring. Since we were looking for a ring, I bent down and started turning it around and saw an inscription inside but it was so tiny that I could not read it. As I turned it around, I spotted an inlaid blue diamond.
We found the ring, not just any ring – we found Yoko?s wedding ring!
Was this a coincidence ? no way! It was an answer to a prayer.
We weren?t looking for it because of the great monetary loss; we wanted to find it because of its significance and emotional attachment.
Whether or not we found it, God would still be great to us.
You see, we had a lovely time together. We supported each other. We learned so much more about our families and ourselves in these 4 hours or so together and we knew we had done all we could.
But finding it demonstrates to us that our great God cares about us. For those of you who were on this walk, you know how totally impossible this undertaking was. This is why we feel so deeply blessed by this experience.
We will continue to sing our song, ?God is so good? which goes onto the words ?He answers prayers…?
