A number of events occurred during Bud Bylsma’s life that showed him that God’s serendipity care guides, heals, and provides for His followers. Here is a summary of a few noteworthy examples from his life that are mentioned in his memoirs (autobiography), Living HIStory: Doing God’s Will on Earth (edited by Peter Bylsma). His memoirs are available to download free of charge on the Bylsma Foundation website.

1.     In 1954 our family of four was living in Philadelphia in a duplex with our belongings. We were preparing to move to Baltimore, but first we had to visit Seattle with two months left on our lease. We didn’t have the money to pay for the two months, so I put an ad in the newspaper to sublease the unit. Two weeks went by and nobody had called about it. But I wasn’t worried, and the morning we were to leave, I got a call. A man said he had seen the ad when it first appeared and wanted to know if it was still available. I said yes, and he came over to the house. He agreed to take it, living with our furnishing in it. He gave us money for two months of rent, I paid the landlord, and we left on our 2-month trip.

2.     Young Life did not pay well. Staff were responsible for raising their own support, and while we were living in Baltimore, I had little income. On Christmas eve in 1957, we had no food in the house, so there would be nothing to eat Christmas morning, but I didn’t tell anybody about it. In the morning when I went to get the newspaper on the front porch, a big bag of groceries was sitting there next to the paper.

3.     Our family moved to California in 1960, and eventually I became a Young Life Area Director in San Jose. In 1965 I was missing the east coast culture but wondered if I should stay in California. I wanted God’s guidance on the matter, so I knelt to pray about it in the living room. I asked God, “Should I stay or should I go? How will I know?”

I heard a clear voice: “Scripture.” I responded, “Where?” The voice in my mind spoke again: “Mark 10.” I continued praying and kept hearing “Mark 10.” I grabbed the Bible that sat on the coffee table and looked up Mark 10. I didn’t get past the first phrase, which began, “And after he left that place …” I said to God, “thank you!”

But I didn’t know where to go. I was considering a move to Detroit or Buffalo and took a trip to Detroit. It didn’t feel right, and Bob Mitchell asked me to consider becoming the Regional Director in southern California. I told him I didn’t want to be a Regional Director and I didn’t want to live in southern Cal. Bob told me, “Go take a look.

So I flew south and met the Young Life staff in the region. They were all in therapy and asked me, “Are you going to change us?” I told them that it’s not my job to change anybody—that’s God’s job. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and return home. But as my plane took off over the city of Los Angeles, I looked down at the sprawl and had an overwhelming feeling that “these are my people” and this was to be my home. So we moved.

4.     After four years as the Regional Director for southern California, Bill Star, the YL President, asked to move to the Great Lakes Region to oversee Young Life operations in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He needed a good manager of people in the position, so in the summer of 1969, we moved to Hinsdale in the western suburbs of Chicago. It was known for its excellent schools and was the home of many senior executives who worked in Chicago. Different areas of the region subsidized my salary, but I still needed to raise funds for my own living expenses. I usually did this by requesting financial support from a few of my wealthy friends. But in 1977, I decided not to tell anybody about my financial needs and see what would happen. I needed to raise at least $10,000 to meet my support needs.

Lisa Tieszen, one of the kids in my Hinsdale club, told me her parents wanted to give money to Young Life and wanted to know how to do it. I told her it depended on how much he would give. In some cases, it was done locally, but for large sums, donations should be sent to the YL headquarters. I left it at that. A short time later, a check arrived at headquarters for $96,000 from the Tieszens. Of this amount, $10,000 was designated to support the YL camps and another $10,00 was to support Tom Moucka, a local guy who was going on staff from the Hinsdale area. The rest ($76,000) was designated for my support. The extra amount would come in handy when I moved to Portland in less than a year, and it covered my expenses until I established contacts in Oregon.

Shortly after receiving the Tieszen gift, Jane Landis, the mother of Emily who was another kid in the Hinsdale club, came down with spinal meningitis, a deadly infection of the brain and spinal cord, and encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. (Those with mild symptoms may recover in 2-4 weeks, but those with severe symptoms may die or be permanently impaired.) The two families were close friends, and I had previously had both illnesses that caused me to take a year off of work and move from Maryland to California. I went to see Jane in the hospital and told her I previous had both illnesses, but God was gracious and I was totally healed. I held her hand and prayed with her.

That evening, I asked God to take the generosity of the Tieszen family and transfer it into healing for Jane. I clearly heard a YES and then felt a shock go through my body. I said, “Thank you.” Jane was back at work in two weeks, fully functioning and feeling perfectly fine.

5.     In the summer of 1977, I was driving a bus full of Hinsdale YL kids back from Malibu, a camp in British Colombia. On a narrow road near Fargo, ND, a large truck approached us. I moved onto the shoulder of the road to let him by. But the shoulder was soft and the weight of the bus caused it to cave in and slowly suck the bus off the road. Eventually, the bus started going down the bank and eventually came to rest just past a cement drainage ditch (2 feet wide, 1 foot deep) part way down the hill. I felt no bump as the bus came to a stop. When the tow truck driver arrived, he asked me, “How did the bus get over here?” The bus wheel was on the other side of the ditch and the bus should have turned over and tumbled down the hill when we hit the ditch, but there were no bus tracks from one side of the ditch to the other where the bus had stopped. I told him, “We will never know how this happened.” I became convinced there are guardian angels watching out for us.

6.     When we decided to move to Portland in 1977 so we could be closer to Patti’s family, I had to buy a house. I flew there for a few days and looked at many houses, knowing I needed to buy one during the trip. I heard about one in the SW hills with a nice view of the valley, and I really liked it. However, it was still in the process of being put on the market. I talked to the agent and asked how much the seller wanted for the house, but was told the price wasn’t established yet. I made an offer and a local doctor also made the same offer. He offered all cash, but I would need to get a loan and wasn’t approved for a loan yet. The agent asked if I could meet an earlier closing date, and I said yes. She said, “It’s yours.” She accepted by personal check from an Illinois bank as earnest money and the deal was done, beating the all-cash offer from the local doctor.

7.     I was driving from Bend, Oregon to Eugene for a Young Life staff meeting on November 16, 1978. It was very cold but clear, and I was driving 70 mph on a straight-away of the highway and was passing a truck. I didn’t know about “black ice” and I eventually found myself passing the truck going sideways. I hit a dry patch which spun me around and took me off the road. The car hit a big tree sideways at the post right behind the driver’s door, folding the car in two, and it came to rest in the bushes. I had an out-of-body experience as I felt myself twirling upward in a spiral and thinking, “I’m going to beat you home, Patti

Then I don’t remember anything. If the car had hit the tree at my door (one foot away), I would have been killed instantly. I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, and after the truck driver called for an ambulance, I was found on the ground in the bushes with one leg still in the car. I had broken 15 bones, mostly in my back, but also my hip and several ribs. The ambulance trip to Bend, followed by the med-evac helicopter ride to Portland, were very painful. I was in the hospital for 10 days while they put me into traction for the long healing process. Howard Blessing rigged up a rope to a beam in the open ceiling so I could lift myself up and sit in bed. After being discharged, I was in pain every time I took a step.

We were attending West Hills Covenant Church in SW Portland and Randy Roth was the senior pastor. During communion six months after the accident, he invited members of the congregation to come forward if they wanted prayer while the other pastor administered communion. I decided to go forward. Randy asked me, “What do you want prayer for?” I said, “I can’t take a step or bend over without pain.” Randy put some oil on my wrist and prayed quietly while the congregation sang songs. I don’t remember what he said, and when he said Amen, I limped slowly back to my seat.

When I was home later that day, I dropped something and bent over to get it. When I stood back up, I realized I had bent over without any pain. I said to myself, “I just bent over and it didn’t hurt.” I bent over several more times to see if I would be in pain, and the pain was gone. Then I just started laughing. The pain never returned.

8.     Patti and I went to Cuba in 2002 after we found her relatives in Pinar del Rio a few years earlier. I had been ill and realized on the flight to DC that I had forgotten my Prednisolone (a prescription of 30 pills of 5 mg each). I got very sick on the flight from DC to Miami, and I figured we would get a replacement prescription in Miami by having my son Steve (a doctor) write one for me. But after we arrived late that evening, we couldn’t find a pharmacy that was open. I figured we would get it in Havana. We flew to Havana early the next morning, and we were met by our driver who would take us to Pinar del Rio, about 100 miles west of Havana where Patti’s father had lived. We told him we first needed to find a pharmacy so I could get my medication. But the driver was not from Havana and he couldn’t find a pharmacy that had it.

While we traveled, the driver stopped at his house in a little village 30 miles east of Pinar del Rio. He apologized to his mother for being late—we had taken time to look for a pharmacy and he still had not delivered us to our destination. His mother asked him what we needed, and he told her I needed Prednisolone. She said, “I have some. I don’t know where it came from or when I got it.” She got the bottle from her medicine cabinet and gave it to him to give to me. It was a bottle of 30 pills with 5 mg each, my exact prescription.