This year’s CrossOver Nashville held special significance for Allan Murphy, pastor of North Shelby Baptist Church, Birmingham, and his wife, Mary.
Six years to the day that their daughter, Joy, drowned off the coast of Venezuela while on a missions trip, the couple set out from Rome Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tenn., to visit homes for CrossOver, held June 18.
The former International Mission Board missionaries to Curacao said they were expecting the day to be a hard one filled with memories of their missions-minded daughter and had asked friends and family for their prayer support.
God heard those prayers and led the couple to a girl named Rachel.
Rachel was born in 1980, the same year as Joy. She is also the daughter of a preacher, like Joy.
But when the Murphys met Rachel, she was in the middle of a divorce and moving herself and two young children in with her boyfriend.
After talking with the Murphys, which happened to be six years to the hour that Joy died, Rachel found new life.
“On the day that I was thinking of our daughter going to heaven, a young lady, the same age as our daughter would be, was given assurance that she will be going to heaven,” Allan Murphy said.
(TAB)
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