Inside Story for Friday 11th of April 2025

By Andrew McChesney

No cow stood in the yard when Mother returned home from the market.

Mother looked around the yard. No cow. She knew her two small children were waiting for her in the house. Tears filled her eyes. How could she tell them that the cow, their only source of income, had been stolen? Without the cow, they would die.

Image © Pacific Press

Mother decided not to tell the children. She didn’t want them to see her tears. Walking over to some bushes, she poured out her heart to God. She reminded Him that her husband, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, had been arrested for keeping the Sabbath and sentenced to eight years of hard labor far from their home in the then-southern Soviet republic of Tajikistan. She thanked God for the now stolen cow, whose milk she had traded for flour, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and cucumbers at the village market.

“What next?” she wept. “How can my children and I survive?”

As she cried and prayed, she looked at the bushes and saw something caught in the branches. She looked closer and saw that it was a banknote for a large sum of money. “Thank You, God!” she prayed. “You have sent money to buy another cow.”

Mother dried her tears and returned to the market to look for another cow. But every seller wanted more money than she had found in the bushes.

Finally, a man agreed to lower his price.

“I’ll give you my cow for the amount of money that you have,” he said.

It was the smallest, scrawniest cow in the market.

Mother handed over the money and took the cow home.

“God, this cow is in Your hands,” she prayed.

At home, Mother fed the cow, and the two children played with it. With food and love, the cow grew and grew. Before long, it was producing twice as much milk as the cow that was stolen.

“God saved our lives during this difficult time,” said Liubov Brunton, the granddaughter of the mother in the story.

She said the miracle with the milk serves as a powerful reminder that God protects and cares for His mission workers, no matter where and when they serve. But the story of the cow didn’t end there. Liubov’s grandmother was about to witness another miracle. Read about it next week.

Thank you for your mission offerings that support the spread of the gospel around the world.

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