God Shouts When He Whispers: A Personal Testimony of God’s Involvement in My Life

By Sandra Richards

About the Book
Sandra Richards describes real-life events and experiences through a collection of inspirational stories. She relates how God’s protection and providence served in her life, and how He worked in her life to make changes. Sandra describes miracles and the direct inspiration of angels that happened. She includes unique experiences involving Elvis Presley and the Lord. The story shows ways that people can have faith, and believe that God is real and that He loves us all very much.
About the Author
Sandra Richards was born in Oneida, New York, and currently resides in Hong Kong where she is “GG” to her grandson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889259725

Book preview

Introduction

In the Bible, parents often named children for their meanings. As a Bible-believing Christian, my name implied a special import to me. For example, a pastor once acknowledged that I have the gift of helps. It is in the list of gifts in I Corinthians 12:28.

An aspect concerning my birth is when my mother, pregnant with me; chose the name Beverly. However, a cousin born three months before my birth was named Beverly, which means warlike. My mother chose Sandra instead, which means helper of mankind. I always felt God had a hand in choosing my name and wondered how He could fulfill the promise of helping mankind someday.

As a child, I read The Bible Story Books during summer vacation from school. I loved the stories of God providing for people through working miracles. One of my favorite stories is about the widow who went to the prophet Elisha for help when her husband died. He owed money, and the creditors threatened to take her two sons to sell to pay the debt. She had a small pot of oil, and Elisha told her to gather as many empty jars as she could and then enter her house, shut the door, and pour the oil from her pot into all the others. So she went home and did as told, and God miraculously filled all the jars. She then sold the oil to pay the debt and lived off the rest with her sons. 

Reading these stories gave me faith in God. I believed God would work miracles on behalf of people that believed in Him. Throughout my life, God provided many instances of miraculous help for me. Some of the stories are included in this testimony.

Chapter One

Early Memories

In 1962, my family lived in a rented cottage in the small village of Pleasant Lake, New York. One main dirt road ran down the middle of the town. The house faced a large dark wooded area where the road ended. We were not allowed to play in the forest. Many of the places were summer homes for wealthy families.

My family had five children, Brenda, Gloria, Sandra, Nathan, and Sharon. Mom expected her sixth child in November. Our dad, Nathan, worked at the Continental Can Company and received a weekly paycheck. Though not rich, we ate well and had no fear of deprivation.

A black and white television came into our home, and for the first time, I saw Elvis Presley. He danced and slid down a pole in the movie Jailhouse Rock. I watched, fascinated by the freedom of his movements. As conservative Christians, we did not dance or wear jewelry or makeup. 

While other children were watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, we dressed in our best clothes and went to church every week. Sabbath School teachers taught Bible stories and songs. Then we would stay for the church service. The wooden benches were hard and slippery. When my mother changed one of the baby’s diapers, he wiggled so much he slid off the seat onto the floor.

My two older sisters, Brenda and Gloria, and I played Monopoly one evening on the porch. We sat on the floor while a record played Christian music. The Old Rugged Cross came on and as I listened to the music, I envisioned Jesus on the cross on the hill of Calvary, dying for my sins. Tears welled up in my eyes. Brenda, my eldest sister, asked me what was wrong. I quickly averted my eyes and said, Nothing. She would not understand what I felt, so I repressed my feelings. I should have said, Jesus died for my sins, and I can see Him suffering for me on the cross when I hear that song. 

The family often took walks in the evenings for entertainment. Sometimes, my mother would stop and say, There’s a snake ahead. So we would wait with my mother, and my father would go ahead of us. He would find a snake and kill it every time before we proceeded further. My mother said she could feel the presence of the snake.

A reported sighting of a black panther near the community kept us from playing outside after dark, and a notice was issued. My parents told us they could scream like a woman or cry like a baby. In the summer, I slept on the screened-in porch with the door open to the house. One evening as I lay in bed, I heard the sounds of a baby softly crying outside the window by my bed. Too terrified to move, my heart started pounding in my chest. I did not look to see or cry out. It could have mimicked the baby’s sounds in our house if it was a panther. Then, frightened, I covered my head, prayed, and eventually, the sound stopped. Then I fell asleep.

The community we lived in provided a park with a play area for the children. An iron framed merry-go-round with wooden seats was there, but some of the wooden planks were rotting away. One day, while at the park, I saw our neighbor with a toolbox and lumber. I watched as he measured and sawed some planks and replaced the rotting ones. The story of Jesus healing the ten lepers came into my mind and I knew I should thank the man for fixing the wooden seats. Only one healed leper came back to praise God and thank Jesus for his miracle. Jesus turned to the people around him and said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. (Luke 17:17, 18) Jesus was disappointed that only one man of the ten had returned.

As he picked up his tools to leave, I gathered the courage to go over to him and say, Thank you for fixing the merry-go-round. He paused to look at me and said, You’re welcome, and left. He told my father later that I had thanked him.

In 1963 I turned ten years old, and we moved to Dexterville, New York. A large Adventist church and school were there. I believe the family moved so the children could enroll in the school. My family had six children at the time and my mother was expecting her seventh. I was the third oldest.

When facing the house from the road, there was a stand of pine trees to the right. One time, Dennis, Gloria, and I went into the woods together. Gloria decided to scare us and then ran off and left. Dennis and I began singing Onward Christian Soldiers as we picked our way back out of the trees. The pine trees had scary-looking branches with pointy limbs, and it was dark in the middle of the stand. I was ten, Gloria was twelve, and Dennis was seven.

This year President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. We watched the funeral procession on our black and white television. It did not mean a lot to me as a ten-year-old, but I remember my father saying, You will probably never see this again in your lifetime, and he made us sit and watch. The most interesting part was seeing the prancing horse following the casket.

A New Year’s snowstorm broke records. My father went outside to cut wood for the pot-bellied stove in the blizzard-like conditions. I dressed in my winter coat, boots, and mittens and went out. I asked him if I could help. He looked at me and asked what I could do. I offered to sit on the logs so they would not move when he cut them. He said that would help. So, I sat on the wood, and my weight held them more still so he could crosscut them easier. Then I helped carry the cut wood into the house. That was the last opportunity I had to help him.

The following summer, in 1964, an elderly couple, Mabel and Arthur, invited me to stay in their home. They were church members and close friends of my parents. They had no children. Mabel was alone all day while Arthur worked, and she wanted a companion to go biking and walking with her. They were originally from Maryland, and their voices had soft accents when they spoke.

They lived on a rural paved road near the Roosevelt Adventist church. I remember that summer with great happiness. The guest bedroom was upstairs, and I had the place to myself. After living with six siblings, I enjoyed being alone.

The neighbors had a pony, and I could see him from the branches of a large mulberry tree in the backyard. So I climbed up one day and began to neigh to the pony. To my delight, he started neighing back and running back and forth in his pasture, looking for the invisible horse in my direction. Arthur came out the back door and said, Sandra, the neighbors called, and they want you to stop teasing their pony.

Then, feeling sheepish, I called back, Okay, and climbed down.

The church held a Vacation Bible School, and I attended with other children from the area. We made crafts, sang songs, played games, and learned Bible stories.

One Sabbath, Mabel, Arthur, and my family were invited to another church member’s home for lunch after church services. They lived on a non-working farm in the country. After lunch, we went for a hike up a nearby wooded hill. I hung around the adults to be near my father. While walking, he turned to me and said, Sandra, go with the other children ahead of us. So I left the adults and joined the other kids. The adults wanted to talk and not have children listening.

Two weeks later, my father surprised me with a visit on his motorcycle on Friday, August 7, 1964. He said he was going to the hospital that weekend. I did not know he had been sick and was surprised to hear he would be hospitalized and have surgery. Before he left, he gave me a ride on his blue Honda motorcycle to the corner and back and then dropped me off. I waved and watched until he turned the corner and disappeared. I never saw him alive again, and years later, I learned he had died from cancer.

On Monday, Mabel and I went to the back portion of their property to pick blackberries for breakfast. Their backyard sloped down to a gully where a stream flowed. We crossed the stream and then up the other side to where the blackberry bushes were. As we came back, Arthur drove into the yard. Mabel commented, There must be something wrong, as we walked to meet him.

Arthur turned to me and said, Sandra, your father died. The words didn’t sink in right away. We all went into the house, and Mabel had me wash the berries. I could hear them arguing about whether I should go to the funeral or not. None of it made any sense to me. We ate our berries with milk, and an atmosphere of solemnity pervaded the house.

I went upstairs to be by myself and lay on the bed. What does Arthur mean, my father died? I thought to myself. The reality had not set in yet. A couple of days later, my mother brought me a new blue dress to wear to the viewing. I got dressed and went with Mabel and Arthur to the funeral parlor. We entered a room where people were sitting all around the outside of the room. I wandered around and recognized relatives and friends of the family. They looked toward the end of the room and cried. I looked to see what they saw. That was when I saw my father in the casket.

I slowly walked to the casket and stood there, silent. My father was lying so still. That was when it hit me, full in the face. He was dead and would never speak to me or hold me on his lap. I began sobbing uncontrollably. Aunt Marguerite, my father’s sister, came and took me to a chair and held me on her lap as I cried. A couple of minutes later, one of the funeral directors led me to a small office, still weeping, and sat me down in a chair. To quiet me down, he gave me the option of two different colored plastic rain bonnets with the name of the funeral home printed on them. I realized what he wanted and thought, They want me to stop crying. So, I chose one and repressed the sobs. I stayed in the office until taken home with Mabel and Arthur. That night I became restless and fell out of bed. They heard me fall and asked if I was alright. I said, Yes, climbed back into bed, and went to sleep.

The following day we went to the funeral. When we arrived, chairs were set up in rows in the center of the room, facing the casket. Someone asked me if I wanted to sit in the front row. I said, No, I might start crying again. I will sit with Mabel and Arthur. Nobody argued with me and left me with Mabel and Arthur. My mother and two older sisters were in the front row.

The minister had my father’s Bible and remarked that when looking at the underlined passages, he felt my father believed in God and had a relationship with Him (or something like that, I don’t remember exactly how he said it). That comment made me feel a little better inside because I believed in the resurrection when Jesus comes again. So, if my father believed strongly in God, I would see him again in the future.

At the interment, I stood off a little bit at the cemetery and watched the proceedings. I felt all alone. There was no one to comfort me, talk kindly to or hug me, or say they could understand how I felt. Afterward, my mother told me that she and the rest of the family were temporarily moving to her mother’s house, about 250 miles away. She gave me the option of moving with the family then or I could stay with Mabel and Arthur until school started. So I chose to stay with Mabel and Arthur. I unconsciously recognized the need to be by myself to grieve.

Chapter Three

God Whispers in Fort Anne

Summer ended, and my mother took me to her parent’s home one day. We called our grandmother, Mommer, and our grandfather, Poppy. They lived in a two-bedroom home on the edge of the Hudson River in Bemis Heights, a small community near Mechanicville, New York. They had a large screened-in porch that faced the river on one end, and at the other end was another glass-enclosed porch used year-round for a living room.

They managed to find enough room for everyone to sleep. We stayed outside most of the time when up and amused ourselves. We were allowed to swim in the river. Mommer and Poppy kept inner tubes for us to float on the river. Poppy kept the seaweed cleared in front of the house about ten feet from the shore. We just had to be careful about going out too far, getting caught in the river’s stream, and getting carried downstream. Thankfully, that never happened to any of us. We also had a bicycle to share on the dirt road by the house, shaped like a U. My grandparent’s home was on the corner of the U.

Shortly after arriving at Mommer and Poppy’s house, we began traveling daily to Hudson Falls, New York, to go to the Seventh-day Adventist school on Dix Avenue. It took about forty minutes to drive each way.

In the meantime, my mother looked for a house to rent closer to the school. She finally located one in Fort Anne, New York, a large old farmhouse. She made arrangements to purchase the home from the owner. The property had an old barn and about four acres of land that ended in the back against a creek. The house had two floors with four rooms to use as bedrooms upstairs and a bedroom downstairs. As with most old farmhouses, the house had a parlor and a living room with the kitchen and bathroom downstairs. An attached shed led off from the kitchen.

In the front yard, a single maple tree beckoned to me. Previous climbers had already broken in a swaybacked lower horizontal limb. I made myself