By Laurie Winslow Sargent:

Photo by clarita

I’d lived in Norway with my husband and kids for about a year. One day when I was desperately missing family and friends, I experienced a miracle from God in an overseas call.

How I had longed to hear a warm hello in my beloved English. I can see now how foreigners living in America must miss hearing their own mother tongue. Despite the excitement and fun of living abroad, it can be exhausting having to function all day, every day, in a second language.

I truly loved living in Norway, and was proud to learn to speak a little Norwegian. We worshiped at two amazing Norwegian churches, one conducted in Norsk, the other in English.

Yet I became weary from calculating sock sizes in metric sizes. Tired of deciphering school papers one . . . word . . . at . . . a . . .time, with my Norsk-Engelsk dictionary in hand. Embarrassed that my poor Norwegian grammar made my son’s friends giggle. And frustrated that I couldn’t yet understand the quick-paced foreign chatter on the radio.

It helped to call home to the States occasionally.  In 1996 (before Skype!) that was not easy. The nine-hour time difference—crossing multiple time zones—created a tiny three-hour window when both I and my friends were home and awake at the same time.

At a dollar per minute, a breezy twenty-minute chat meant twenty bucks less to pay for kjott (meat). It was too extravagant for me to call just for companionship. Sigh.

Photo by mconnors

One Sunday afternoon, I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to call my friend Bette in Washington State. It was a strange urge, because we hadn’t spoken since I’d left America about a year before.

I felt a stab of guilt. Bette had been terminally ill when we’d last spoken. Why hadn’t I called sooner?  I’d been caring for my newborn and six-year-old daughters, and my eleven-year-old son. And we were still emotionally recovering from a severe accident my husband had suffered on the job a month or so before, when he’d been hospitalized with burns.

Yet suddenly I feared I might have already lost the opportunity to ever hear Bette’s voice again. Before we had moved, Bette said, “No matter what, we’ll see each other again: here, there, or in the air!”

I hoped it would still be here. Or there.  Yet even if I were to dial and reach only her grieving husband, I  sensed that I still must call.

But when? In Norway, 9:30 p.m. would be just after noon, her time. Perhaps I could catch them just after they returned home from church.

I realized that I also longed to call my friend Joanne, in Redmond, Washington, but for purely selfish reasons. To gripe a little. Laugh a little. Talk about everything and nothing in particular.

Yet I couldn’t justify the expense of placing two calls. Joanne and I had talked not long before during our medical crisis. No, I’d have to choose. Bette was more important than my own need for casual comfort.

I paced impatiently all afternoon and evening. My family went to bed. I was sleepy too. But I waited until the precise moment our pendulum clock bonged on the half hour, then picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello?” I heard a welcome response. The connection was remarkably clear—as if I’d called next door.

“This is Laurie, calling from Norway!” I said.

Suddenly I heard an explosion of laughter, cries of “No way!” and shouts of “Praise God!”

I was put on a speaker phone, and heard a chorus of encouraging voices. Joe. Our long-time friend Sylvia, who’d flown in for the weekend from Pennsylvania. And Bette! I felt overwhelmed.

Yes, she was ill. Yet her enthusiasm and faith still encouraged me. Even in her illness, Bette encouraged others.

Then suddenly on the end of the line I also heard . . . what? who? Joanne!? And Chuck, her husband? What were they doing there, two hours from home?

They told me, with excitement, that they were there to spend time with Bette and pray together. The instant they’d grasped hands—unbelievably, to pray for our family and Gordy in particular—the phone had rung with my call.  Bette said they nearly hadn’t answered it. They usually shut the ringer off entirely when praying.

We all joined together in prayer, via the speakerphone. I closed my eyes as we prayed. Remarkably, it seemed as if we were shoulder to shoulder in the same room, not half a world apart, as we jointly lifted concerns and gratitude to God.

How deeply he cares for us and values our friendships! I called to offer comfort to a friend—but my Lord knew I needed it too. Before I ever sensed that I must call Bette, God had gone before me, prompting Joanne and Chuck to hop in their car and Sylvia to board a plane—all bound for Bette’s.

I suspect that God chuckled at my reluctant decision to call only one friend because of the expense.

I imagine he must have rubbed his hands in great anticipation the instant I picked up the phone to dial.

For he knew at that precise moment five friends—from three different cities—would be together praying for me and my family on the other side of the world. All along my great God planned to give me five blessings for the price of one.

I and my friends truly experienced a miracle from God in an overseas call that we never forgot.  That wasn’t the only time my great God used a simple telephone for a miracle, as you may recall from my previous story,  Comfort from God Through a Long Distance Call.  God cares when we are hurting, and he also cares when we crave simple friendship. Oh, what an awesome, personal God we have!

©2005 Laurie Winslow Sargent. Previously published as Overseas Connection, in the book Kisses of Sunshine for Women, edited by Thelma Wells and Carol Kent, published by Zondervan. Share your thoughts about this story on our brand new Twitter page: @FindingGodDaily with #OverseasConnection  in your comments.

In this YouTube video, you can hear what the Norwegian language sounds like, and hear the voice of  Norwegian Bodil Arnesen (with the München Rundfunk Orchester) singing Solveigs Song, by composer Edvard Grieg. You can visit Bodil at http://www.bodilarnesen.com.