Hank Smith:                      00:03                   Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. John, we are in Ezra and Nehemiah this week. Tell me what story you have ready.

John Bytheway:               00:15                   Well, I was thinking about the miraculous turn of events that King Cyrus would let those in exile in Babylon just go back to Jerusalem. Nehemiah starts to rebuild the wall. Seems pretty unlikely. I just found this story. I just thought, I was like, oh, sure. It’s one of those. This is Richard Craycroft on a mission, 1958. He says, “We’re walking along a gravel road on a hillside above Baden, Switzerland. I was suddenly laid low by a speck of dust in my right eye. I learned as one who had worn brand new contact lenses for only five days that a moat feels like a beam. I quickly extracted the lens, cleaned and re-wetted it and prepared to reinsert it, but as I held my finger at the ready, a gust of wind suddenly swept the lens from my fingertips. My lens was gone with the wind.

                                           01:07                   I stood aghast and virtually blind, being pledged into 2,600 vision in one eye, which had been miraculously corrected to 20/20 a week earlier. Elder Neil Redding and I began to search on hands and knees on the wet gravel sweeping an eight-foot radius for my supposed point of loss. We searched futilely for 20 minutes. Then half blind and half despairing, I suggested to my companion that while we were already in that position, we should pray. I reasoned with the Lord, told him about my need to see about our need to meet our three investigator families that evening about my feeling that there was more to be gained from finding the lens than by my learning whatever I was to learn from the loss. As I concluded the prayer, I stood up. I received one of those Joseph Smith flashes of intelligence.” Remember how Joseph Smith described revelation could be a flash of intelligence.

                                           02:02                   “It surprised me. I reacted at once, explaining the revealed plan to my startled companion.” Hank, you’re going to love this. “I stood on my feet in the same place I’d stood earlier, squeezed out of my left contact lens and was instantly plunged into the distorted visual blindness of 2600 vision. I had begun my step into the dark.” So he took out his other contact lens, Hank.

Hank Smith:                      02:26                   The key to finding the contact

John Bytheway:               02:28                   Was to lose both of them. “Assured that my companion was on his knees at the ready. I put my left lens in my mouth, extracted it, mounted it on my finger six inches away from my face. I waited, but not for long. A slight breeze caught the lens and it was gone. My step into the dark was now complete. I stood still heart in throat until Elder Redding said, ‘I see it. It’s still in the air.’ ‘Don’t lose it,’ I pled, and held my breath. ‘It’s still up,’ he whispered. ‘Now 10 feet away.’ Then from even further away, he exclaimed ‘it’s starting to fall.’ ‘Keep your eye on it,’ I pled again, ringing my hands in apprehension. ‘I see it. I see it,’ he said. Then there was a long pause, three or four seconds, and then, ‘Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.’ I braced. ‘Oh my gosh,’ he repeated. ‘It landed and almost right on top of the other lens.’

                                           03:21                   ‘You see the other lens?’ I shouted. ‘Yeah, it’s right here.’ The darkness was flooded with light. Unable to see a thing. I crawled over to him on hands and knees slowly. He planted in my palm in order my left and right lenses, my seer stones, he called them. I wet the lenses and with my back to the wind and sheltered by my companion’s hovering frame, I implanted them. And there was light and it was good. We knelt full of gratitude and thanked our God for tender and tangible mercies. We passed on to the next house filled with wonder at a God who knows each sparrow’s fall and the exact whereabouts in Baden, Switzerland of Elder Craycroft’s right contact lens.”

Hank Smith:                      04:02                   Wow.

John Bytheway:               04:03                   Can you believe that? It fell on top of the other one. Just as miraculous. That’s my way of connecting these two stories. I’m going to let you go back to Jerusalem and rebuild. God knows where lost things are and he even knows where lost people are. Just one of the reasons we love him.

Hank Smith:                      04:21                   Yeah. And it would have to be a shock to find out that you’ve been in captivity for decades. You can go home now.

John Bytheway:               04:29                   Wait, what? Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      04:30                   Yeah. It would be just as shocking as finding your…

John Bytheway:               04:33                   Well, take out your other one and let the wind blow it and it’ll be in the same spot.

Hank Smith:                      04:40                   That is two kinds of crazy. It is miraculous crazy and just crazy crazy.

John Bytheway:               04:45                   Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      04:45                   But I love it. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get a podcast. We are in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah with Dr. Christina Olson this week. She’s going to bring, books that I didn’t really know much about, she highlights things that I hadn’t seen before. Then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM favorites.