Yesterday Rob went down to the lower basement to find a mini-flood. Something had gotten pushed up against the sump-pump, preventing it from working. As soon as the lever was liberated, the sump-pump immediately began to operate, pulling most of the water from the basement back out. Fortunately, there were mostly only empty boxes on the floor, so nothing was damaged. But after the pump had pulled all the water back into the hole it sits in, although the motor continued to operate, the water level didn’t go down. After several minutes, the motor began smelling hot, so I unplugged it. As we’d had lots of rain and snow, and the snow was melting, I was amazed that the hole didn’t fill back up and reflood the basement, but it didn’t. Every few minutes I would plug it back in, it would suck out an inch or so, then it would sound like it was laboring and would get hot, but the water would remain. As soon as it was unplugged, the water would fill back up to the top, but it didn’t overflow it.

I remember thinking that there must not be much water in the ground right then, or we would have been reflooded immediately. Finally we started calling plumbers, but everyone was busy. One person said they could come in 3 weeks . . . We also had a Christmas production we wanted to go to that evening at the church, and we had invited some friends to go along. We didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house with the pump not working. Anyway, to make a long story short, I finally thought to pray about it. When I plugged the pump in again, and it slowly began to drain completely, and the motor kicked off when it was empty as it was supposed to. But IMMEDIATELY, water from under the house came RUSHING in to refill the hole causing the pump to start working again almost immediately to re-empty the hole! The water was pouring in from under the house so fast that the poor pump was kicking in every few seconds.

Fortunately, it seemed to have completely forgotten it had been broken and overheated! Three miracles! First of all, God “unstuck” the pump. Secondly, He kept it from overheating with it’s regular job once it was unstuck, and thirdly, when it wasn’t working, God kept the water out of the house until it was working again. Oh. Another miracle. I had wanted to go to Toronto for the day, but it didn’t work out and I wasn’t too happy about that! But God told me to trust Him. Now I see why He didn’t want me going to Toronto! The damage to the lower basement could have been extensive if we hadn’t caught it when we did. Praise God for taking care of our little needs too!

Lyn Chaffart (Received on Sunday December 23, 2001)