"The day's adventures completely drained me."

Hernån shivered as he told me the story, remembering the stress and hope of that day in Cuba.

"I was there to help the church with evangelism, but they had also asked me to look at the Mission's press. It was their only press, and it was very old. God had kept it working for more than 35 years, but it would no longer move paper through the rollers. The young men working in the Mission office now looked at me and asked for a miracle."

Hernån, the visiting printer from Ecuador, tried every solution he could imagine, and then gave up. Almost.

"Maybe if we take it completely apart," he suggested, "we might see how to fix it."

By noon the trustworthy old press was an iron skeleton, its innards strewn across the storeroom like a printer's junkyard. Hernån and his four teenage assistants stood among the parts, sweating bare-chested in the oppressive heat.

"When we took it apart," Hernån told me, "I discovered the problem. A small lever was missing so the press couldn't feed the paper!"

That's when the Mission president walked into the room.

"What have you done to our press?! We use that press to print Voice of Prophecy Bible lessons and Sabbath school lessons for all the Adventists in Cuba. You have destroyed our press!!!"

Hernån shivered again, re-living the worst moment of his life.

"It may be your only press," he said kindly, "but it doesn't work, and I am trying to fix it."

His explanation brought much waving and shouting that the press be "put back together right now!"

Hernån explained about the missing lever, and said that he thought they ought to pray before he started re-assembling. "They looked at me shocked," he remembered. "And then everyone left! I was standing alone in the press room, and they all ran away when I said we ought to pray!"

Hernån prayed, alone, press parts strewn around him and hope his only friend.

"Several eternities later," Hernån continued, "[my assistants] walked back into the room. But this time their faces were washed, their hair combed, and despite the heat they all wore shirts. They looked at me, and said, 'Okay, now we're ready to pray. Hernån, you start.'"

But Hernån couldn't pray. He was too busy wiping his eyes.

When the prayer was over, Hernån wiped his eyes again, and then looked down at the floor. There, right between his feet, where a few minutes ago there had been nothing but floor, lay the missing part.

That evening, when all of the parts were together, everyone watched as Hernån guided a blank page through the "renewed" press. It came out looking awful.

"The first one is always bad," Hernån encouraged as he twisted dials and adjusted rollers. "Let's see what it does now."

The celebration began moments later as God's ancient press once again produced a perfect Voice of Prophecy lesson page.

Dick Duerksen is the official storyteller for Maranatha Volunteers International. Readers may contact Dick by e-mail at: dduerksen@maranatha.org.