The youth group started to grow. The youth group grew to more than 300 kids, and out of that group 25 people went into full-time ministry. One of them was a girl named Mary Boyd. Mary grew up in a home where her mother literally practiced witchcraft and Buddhism.
Mary and her family got radically saved because of that youth group. Mary went off to Bible College and met Dave Boyd. They married and entered full-time children’s ministry, and today they head the children’s department for the Assemblies of God, where they perform Kids Crusades and Kids Camps for thousands of kids every year. And thousands of kids get saved and filled with the Spirit every year, because someone grappled with God.
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Speaking of Dave and Mary Boyd, have I ever told you their story? About five years ago Dave was working in the attic of his garage one afternoon, and Mary was in the house. Mary heard a horrible crash in the garage and ran out to see Dave in a puddle of his own blood. The garage was open, and her next-door neighbor, a medic in Vietnam, saw Dave on floor. He ran over and told Mary to grab some towels and call the ambulance. The ambulance rushed Dave to the hospital, and Mary followed in her car.
As she was driving, she started to call people and tell them Dave was in a horrible accident and they needed to start praying for him. Mary got to the hospital and met with the doctor. The doctor told Mary they examined Dave and his head was okay, it was just a bad gash.
What bothered them though was when they X-rayed him his elbow was completely shattered and they needed to perform emergency surgery to remove the bone fragments.
The doctors spent hours with a pair of tweezers pulling out fragments. His elbow was completely gone. This was maybe on a Friday, and the doctor said they needed to give Dave’s arm time to heal because on Monday they were going to fuse his arm together.
Mary told the Doctor what Dave did for a living and that they used puppets. The doctor told Mary that Dave never would be able to do that again, because his arm would be permanently fused in a 90-degree angle.
Mary went home and did some research on the Internet and found out that if Dave had a rubber elbow, he could do some of the movements. So Mary went back to the doctor and inquired about the possibility. The doctor said they had thought about that, but Dave didn’t have enough arm or elbow left for that type of procedure.
That night Mary called people and told them what the doctor said and asked people to pray that there would be enough tissue so Dave could continue in his work with children.
Mary spent the night and following days until time for the surgery in prayer for Dave. A couple of hours later, the doctor came out and pulled Mary into another room. Mary thought the doctor was going to tell her something had gone wrong and that he was about to give her bad news.
The doctor said something totally different though. He said that when they began to perform the surgery, they looked at Dave’s bones and it suddenly seemed like a new elbow appeared. All the doctors needed to do was connect it. One of the nurses who had been present for the first surgery also attested that she knew Dave’s arm hadn’t been like that before.