Believing Is Seeing

My family and I were on our way to attend my dad’s high school class reunion in Park City, Montana, when the accident happened.

Halfway to Park City, my parents decided to stop and camp for the night. My dad asked my two older brothers, Bob and Dan, to gather wood and start a fire. He gave each of them a couple of matches. When Dan scraped his match against a stone, the flaming tip broke off and hit his eye, burning it badly before bouncing away. He cried out in terrible pain. My dad tried to comfort him, and my mom held ice on his eye to stop the burning.

When my brother had calmed down, my parents looked at his eye. Their worst fears were confirmed when they saw that the color of Dan’s eye was no longer brown, but completely white. They covered his eye and made him as comfortable as possible.

We climbed into the car and headed for Helena, the nearest town, where my brother was immediately taken to an eye specialist. After the exam, the specialist told my parents that Dan was blind in the damaged eye.

He gave Dan some medicine to put in his eye and a patch to keep the eye clean and protected. He told my parents to go to the class reunion and then bring Dan in for another exam on the way home.

After we received the bad news, my dad gathered us together and announced that our family would fast the next 24 hours for Dan’s full recovery. The day went by quickly as we concentrated on Dan and his need for comfort and healing. I believed that whatever the outcome, the Lord loved Dan and would help him.

My dad had tears streaming down his face when he gave Dan a priesthood blessing. It was the most beautiful blessing of healing I have ever heard. My dad told Dan that the Lord loved him and had many things for him to do in this life. He also told him he would need both of his eyes to complete his mission on earth, that his eye would heal, and that his vision would be fully restored. During the blessing, we all felt the Spirit and knew that God was mindful of us, especially of my brother during this trial.

When we returned to Helena, the eye specialist invited us into his examination room, where he again looked at Dan’s injured eye. He asked my parents if they were sure that this eye was the injured one. He said the eye he examined had to be the wrong eye because it was perfectly normal. Perplexed, he then checked Dan’s other eye. It, too, was normal. The specialist told my parents that it was impossible for an eye to heal like that. He had no explanation for it.

But we knew what had happened. The power of the priesthood, coupled with fervent prayer, faith, fasting, and an acceptance of the Lord’s will, had brought down the blessings of heaven.