On
January 18, 2003, five hundred and thirty homes were destroyed, four
people died, and many more were burned while trying to save their dwellings
during a devastating brushfire in Australia's capital city Canberra,
but my mother's life and house were saved from the flames by a miracle!
How it happened can only be described as Divine intervention.
At 9:00 AM on January 18, my mother telephoned me from her home in Duffy,
a Canberra suburb. It was very unusual for her to call so early and
I became curious. "Please come and pick me up and take me somewhere,"
she said. "Where do you want to go?" asked my husband, knowing
that my mother never liked to leave her home, especially on weekends.
"I don't care. Just take me somewhere," she replied.
My
husband then went to pick her up, and when they arrived back at my home,
I asked her, "Mum, what's the trouble? Are you sick or something?"
"No," she said, "I only had this feeling to come to your
house today." So we settled down, thinking that everything was
all right. But after lunch I noticed that Mum seemed very gloomy. She
told me she wanted to go back to her house, because she had an anxious
feeling about it.
As
we were talking about going back to Duffy, the phone rang. It was a
representative of the Red Cross, which looks after my mother. She told
us to take Mum out of Duffy, because a bushfire was getting dangerously
close to the suburb. We had hardly finished talking to the Red Cross
representative when the phone rang again. It was my daughter, Ildikó,
who said, "Mum, turn on the radio and listen to the news"
because the bushfire had already reached Duffy. As soon as I put the
phone down, my son Árpád knocked on the door and when
I answered he said, "Mum, Duffy is in danger. We have to go to
Grandma's house and pick her up."
My
mother was still insisting on going home to get her medication so at
3:00 PM my husband put her in his car and set out, but when they got
to the road to Duffy, the fire was already raging. The smoke was so
thick that the street lights had turned on automatically, and visibility
was only 10 meters. The opposite side of the road was all alight, and
everything was burning - trees, grass, houses. My husband then turned
back because of the flames and smoke.
Next,
my son decided to go to Mum's house to pick up the medication. But at
Duffy, he was stopped by the police three times and told not to go on.
When he finally got through to Mum's house, the house next door was
already on fire, and burning fiercely. He and his partner then began
to hose down Mum's house, trying to keep the fire from reaching it.
Inside, the house was full of smoke and soot that had entered through
the open windows. The grass and fruit trees in Mum's backyard had burned
to within one meter of the house. My son stayed there until midnight,
fighting the fire and defending his grandmother's property, and through
God's grace, the house was eventually saved.
I
have no doubt that it was a Divine miracle that saved my mother's life
and her only possessions, for which she and my father had worked all
in their lives. God's help also was revealed through the members of
the Sydney and Canberra Supreme Master Ching Hai International Associations,
who collected money to help my mother repaint her damaged kitchen. I
pray to Almighty God to return their kindness a thousand times, and
to save them from ever experiencing the kinds of terrible events that
we underwent during the recent bushfire.
The Highest Martial Art
