Spirit
On Fire 
Spirit
On Fire
February 1999 (updated 12/00)
Due to the length of the following testimony you may want to print and then read it. I did. Just 6 pages, and easier to read.
But first go down to 'accident' and see the pictures.
Thank you
Frank Melohn
In April of 1998 I had the most awesome experience. Yes, the word 'awesome' is used much to indiscriminately these days. Awesome probably should be used only when experiencing something from God and it is in that context I must use awesome to describe my experience.
If you have the time, I would like to tell my story to you. It may be a little long but I believe it is worth the time it takes to print and read it.
Born in Waterloo, Iowa in 1939 to my parents who were probably wanting a divorce, but got a baby boy instead. This was 10 years after they were married. I was baptized into the Christian religion at the First Congregational Church and probably became their worst 'black sheep'. I think everyone there was glad when I joined the Catholic church when I got out of high school. My dad had married a wonderful Catholic lady and I had some Catholic friends in my neighborhood. The Congregational church was clear across town while the Catholic church was only a mile from where I lived. Really a great reason for changing, wasn't it!
My dad moved out when I was 5. I can remember one thing from those years. It was my folks 15th wedding anniversary. A party was going on in our house, but my dad and I were in the basement sitting on the stairs. Dad is dead and mom is in a nursing home, so now I feel all right in telling about it. As we were sitting there with the party going on strongly upstairs, my dad was crying. He looked at me and said,"I don't know anybody up there!" I guess he didn't, he left a few weeks later. Although he remarried and lived in the same town, I don't think I saw him more than a dozen times after that in the next 50 years. We did visit each other in the last few years of his life and often talked on the phone the last year.
After their divorce I got a little wild. My mother probably felt that I needed a father figure, so she remarried. Now I know she did it only for me because she couldn't live with any man. Her choice was not very good. Again, since my stepfather has also passed on, I feel free to write about him. He knew nothing about kids. His first marriage ended in divorce and his daughter was also wild child. Now he was trying to raise me. What a joke. He tried, but by then I wasn't listening to anyone. First smoking, then wild car rides, and sex, sex and more sex. I was so lonely that I turned to any one and everyone for affection and love. I also got a gun and was caught carrying it to school. My stepfather finally got fed up and left. I was hurting his business.
Finally I left Iowa and moved to Arizona. More of the same trouble here, so on to California. In California it was worse. Much more drinking and some drugs. Never any 'hard' stuff, but a lot of grass, and uppers and downers. Don't know how I ever kept from getting caught during this time. We would get stoned and then drive down the street at one in the morning. I would see a red light so I put on the brakes and stopped the car; only to realize that we were still a half a block from the light. I even tried LSD once. What a trip. Saw hundreds of the same image revolving around, almost like what the FLY saw in the movie where they showed the girls through his multi lensed eyes. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and moved back to Arizona where I picked up a girl. We moved to Iowa but she left me after a few months. I returned to Arizona for good this time
Suddenly my life seemed to make a turn. Now I realized that Holy Spirit had been with me all this time, but I never understood until now. In 1981 I was working at a college bookstore. I was sent to Stanford for a week seminar about college bookstores. There I met 'her'. Mary Susanne was her name. She worked in a college bookstore in California. Previously she had lived in Phoenix. Then she and her family moved to California where she got a bookstore position, and like me, was sent to Stanford for the seminar. I won't go into her marital problems, except to say that although they had been married in a church, neither of them had ever attended any church after that and their marriage was not built on faith in God, just on convenience.
She began the transformation of my life. In a short time, she was divorced, moved herself and her son to Phoenix and we were married in the Presbyterian Church. First came Becky and a move from Chandler to Mesa. In Mesa I returned to the Catholic church. After Kathleen was born my wife took instructions and joined Christ the King Catholic church. Now the entire family was Catholic, but I hadn't really come home yet.
Looking back I should have had some inkling of Holy Spirit's intervention in my life. First Sue and son Andy then the return to the Catholic church. Another instance happened about ten years ago. I had started smoking when I was 8 or 9 years old. I stole the cigarettes from my mother. By my early 20s I had a three pack a day habit. I burned holes in my jacket, my pants, the carpet and would light up one after another. Now listen to this: We were at Lake Powell one New Years eve for a party, about 1987, and after eating supper (about 10:00 P.M. that night) I started to light up when I was told to lay the smokes and my lighter on the dirty plate and go back to our room and go to sleep. It came right out of the blue. I didn't ask myself any question, just did as the voice inside me said. Since that day I have never stayed up for New Years, nor, have I even had the craving for another smoke. To any smoker or ex-smoker reading this, you'll understand that that was a miracle. Most anyone can quit, but the craving continues for a long time.
Another incident. We were camping across country and on the way home
we had an
accident. In Kentucky on a narrow road in the Land Between the Lakes area, a wheel of our tent trailer came off the road and as I tried to correct for it, the cruise control of our Dodge van stuck at 50 mph causing us to veer off the road and make a complete circle in the grass and finally turning both vehicle on their sides back on the road facing the opposite direction. Both vehicles were destroyed, but we only had a couple of bruises and scratches. This had to be another miracle.
Giving up smoking did not mean that I quit drinking. Still a six-pack every evening after work and a case on the weekend. Boy did I put away the beer. About this time the college bookstores went to a private vendor and I had to transfer to the college district office. I got a place in the accounts payable department under a wonderful boss. I worked for him about 10 years and then he retired. We got a woman boss and my frustrations multiplied. She didn't believe anyone could do anything correctly without her being right on top of you. Another miracle was in the making.
About two months before my first supervisor retired, I pulled or jolted my right shoulder while trying to close a drawer that was stuck open. I didn't feel more then a slight pull but I reported the incident to the proper department.(May 1996).
As time went by the shoulder began to hurt more. By the first of 1997 it hurt so bad that I couldn't even sleep in our bed. I slept in our old motorhome out in the driveway. Placing pillows on the table in the motorhome and sleeping sitting up was the only way I could get any rest. Finally in February I couldn't stand the pain anymore and requested to see the doctor. After seeing the x-rays all he could do was ask when I wanted the operation. The entire rotator cuff was torn. All four tendons had to be repaired. The operation took almost 4 hours and I hurt so badly that (according to the doctor) I was screaming in pain even though I was completely under. Recovery was also very painful.
The month that I was off work after the operation was spent trying to rest on the bed in the motorhome. It is the only place that I could stay without bothering the rest of the family. And it was the only bed where I could keep my arm out and up away from my side, as the doctor prescribed. The pain was so bad that I could only sleep a few minutes at a time. Between sleep, I started praying, and praying, and praying. I learned to pray and I learned about Holy Spirit.
This was March of 1997 and as the Holy Father had declared, "The Year of the Holy Spirit". More examples of Holy Spirit's intervention onto my life. After a month I was forced to return to work, even though one arm was in a sling and practically useless. I felt so rotten about having to go back to a dictatorial supervisor under those conditions that I demanded a transfer. The only opening available was another five miles farter away from home as receiving clerk at the college in South Phoenix. Now how about this. A man with only one working arm trying to transfer to a receiving job. Again Holy Spirit moved.The supervisor wanted me for the position but I had to have a doctor's release to be able to transfer. This was only six weeks after complete rotator cuff sugery. The scar tissue was so thick that I still had the arm in a sling and couldn't raise it more than a couple of inches. I had a doctors appointment on Tuesday so Monday I stayed home. I put a portable pulley and rope on a closet door, sat on the floor, took one end of the rope in each hand and slowly started pulling one end and then the other. Doing this forced my arms, one at a time, over my head. At the end on a half an hour I was crying in pain, but I could use my repaired shoulder. Tuesday I went to the doctor and raising both arms over my head, told him that I wanted a medical release. He couldn't believe it, but he gave me the release and I started my new job a week later.
Even though hurting a little we still went to Yellowstone for vacation that year. The campground reservations had been made a year in advance and everyone really wanted to go. While at home one weekend before the trip I had that voice go off inside of me again. At that time our church was having a teen mass on Sunday evenings and the music was filtering into the other masses. I was really taken by this type of music. It wasn't the same as before and it sounded good. A lot of praise and love. One Saturday afternoon I was home alone and the voice told me that I should put a sign on our motorhome before we went to Yellowstone. I have a few stickers on it. You know, the usual, "I brake for dinorsaurs, Stop poachers, Good Sams and FCRV", signs like that, but nothing about God. I hadn't the slightest idea what to say or how to do it. I knew I couldn't paint a sign on the side ot the vehicle. The answer came back. I was to put something on the spare tire cover. What was I to put on it? A line from one of the songs came to me. "As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord" Now that seemed like it would be very costly, to customize a cover with that on it. A sign shop was only a couple of blocks from the church and there I was led. After explaining what I wanted the lady said,'No problem' All that and the source, Joshua 24:15. came to less then $25. She told me that she also was a member of Christ the King. We put the tire cover on and went on vacation.
Our brakes failed going down a grade on the Utah-Idaho border at Bear Lake. We coasted down the grade (although rather quickly)but with no trouble. Had to completely replace the front brakes before going on. The situation could have be disastrous but it wasn't.
The drive to work and back was a nightmare. While at the district office I drove to work with my wife and she drove home. Now I was traveling farther and doing all the driving. I just couldn't take it. Every one driving like crazy, cutting you off and honking if you don't move fast enough for them. I drive quite assertively but was getting very mad at the idiots on the road. One day after getting to work I ask the Lord what I could do. The answer came back, loud and clear from within, "Get rid of your anger." The anger just went away. Now I use the driving time to pray. Loosing the anger also helped a lot at home. The kids were always doing something that made me mad. Now I seldom yell at them. Guess I am still not perfect in that respect, but we're (Holy Spirit and I) still working on it.
Final example of Holy Spirit working in me. As I mentioned earlier, I liked my beer, I needed my beer, I couldn't stop even though I had tried dozens of times. When I drank I did things that I would never do when I didn't. Two weeks before Christmas, December 1997, I went to bed one Thursday night without a drink. I was out of beer and remarked to myself that on the way home from work the next day, I had to stop and get some for the weekend. Just then that wonderful voice came to me again. "You can quit now," was all it said, but that was the end of my drinking. Just like 10 years before with my smoking habit, this drinking habit became a thing of the past.
Now comes April 1998, finally. As I was laying on my bed, praying, I was completely drowned in the Holy Spirit. Drowned is the only way I can accurately explain it. It may not sound right, but as it happened I felt just as if I were drowning in pure Love and Joy.
If the Holy Spirit had come upon me in the early years of my life I might not have ever realized what it meant. After all those years of sin, and pain and loneliness, now I know what I have and to Whom I belong. I give all praise and glory to God my Father, to God my Brother, and to God, my Friend and Comforter. Each and every day is now filled with wonderment, peace, joy and an eager longing to go home to my Father, but still a desire to keep going on here on Earth so I might be an example to others of how God works, Jesus's love and sacrifice, and Holy Spirit's guidance, and comfort. I am so blessed and so filled with joy that I cannot stop from writing all this down so you can see what the Lord has done to me, one of the least of His, but now one who is so blest.
More has happened since then, but there is no need to write more. If you've read this far you've heard enough. If there is anything here that strikes a chord within you, please write to me. It doesn't matter if you're a Catholic or not, even if you believe in God or even have faith in anything.
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I was truly wrong. There is need to write a little more. After finishing all of the above, I had another experience. I had always gone straight to the Father for everything. I reasoned that because Jesus, being the Son, why not go directly to the Father. Everything that happened above came about while I was going 'directly' to the Father. A few months after writing all of the above I was 'called'. Father made one thing perfectly clear to me. I had to go back and go through Jesus to come back to Father. I had no idea why this happened until I reread the Gospels where Jesus talks about the Father sending us to him (Jesus). Now I understand why. To me this proves beyond any doubt that all that has happened to me was done according to Father's will. Praise Him, praise his Holy Name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN
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I have enough faith for both of us, so write and I'll share mine with you. I haven't moved any mountains yet, I haven't even gotten any of the Gifts of the Spirit yet, but I have all of the Fruits of the Spirit and I will share them with you.
MAY THE PEACE AND LOVE OF OUR LORD BE WITH YOU NOW AND FOREVER