Speaker 1: We fished for about an hour or so, and the
waves just continued to get worse and worse as the
hour went on. We decided this was not worth it.
Let's turn around and go in shore.
Speaker 2: The three brothers began packing up and turning the boat
toward shore.
Speaker 1: And not thirty seconds later, everything changed.
Speaker 3: There was no warning.
Speaker 2: A huge wave coming from the side violently slammed into
their boat, a rogue wave. Before Kyle could even take
a breath, his body was hurled into the deep, churning ocean,
his ears filled with muffled sounds as he clawed at
the water, desperate to reach the surface.
Speaker 3: This is the Miracle Files.
Speaker 4: I'm Emily Jones and I'm Holly Worthington, where two sisters
who love a captivated true story. But we're also seeking
more light in our lives.
Speaker 2: So we're on a mission to find and share unforgettable,
uplifting stories of God's miracles. We hope you'll join us
on this journey.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the Miracle Files. We have a great
story for you today. And if you remember our Mystery
Boat episode, if you love that one, you're gonna love
this One's day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, this is another story where you can just
practically feel something swimming under your feet as you listen
to it.
Speaker 3: It's really good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of a scary thought, So enjoy and we
can't wait to discuss this one afterwards.
Speaker 2: At first, to Kyle, willis nothing about the morning felt foreboting.
That's how so many of these stories begin not with danger,
not with fear, but with something ordinary. It was November
twenty fifth, two thousand and seven, the sunday after Thanksgiving.
Kyle headed out for a day of deep sea fishing
with his twin brother Kevin and their older brother Michael,
who captained an eighteen foot seacat. The sky was mostly clear,
and though the water held a restless edge, the two
foot waves didn't feel like a warning of things to come.
Speaker 1: The fishing trip was something we did often whenever we
were in town from college, and we went out about
six am off the coast of Boyton Beach, Florida, which
is in South Florida on the Atlantic side, and typical
morning we went out to get our bait and from
there we went out about four miles off the coast.
Typically that's where about six hundred feet of water hits,
so that kind of depth is where we found usual
success in fishing, right along the weed line. They're about
four miles off the coast.
Speaker 2: Their older brother, Brian, was also supposed to go out
with them that day, but he'd been called into work,
and Michael's wife at the time, Amy, had also decided
not to go at the last minute. She was seven
months pregnant and wasn't feeling up to it on this
particular morning. The three brothers were still happy to be
out there, enjoying.
Speaker 3: Each other's company.
Speaker 2: They fished, they waited, they adjusted lines, but after a
while it became clear the ocean wasn't cooperating. The bites
weren't coming. Though the forecast had promised calm, the water
slowly began to change. The ship happened so gradually it
was hard to notice at first.
Speaker 1: And so we fished for about an hour or so,
and the waves just continued to get worse and worse.
As the hour went on.
Speaker 2: The three brothers hoped the waves would settle, but they didn't. Instead,
they grew higher, rougher, more aggressive. With each passing minute,
the boat began to rise and fall more sharply, its
movements less predictable.
Speaker 1: Now and then my twin brother was getting seasick. He
had actually been so sick that he was thrown up overboard.
So we decided this was not worth it. Let's go
ahead and pack everything up and turn around and go inshore.
Speaker 2: It was a simple logical choice, the kind that should
have ended the story before it ever had the chance
to begin. But you know what they say, even the
best laid plans can go wrong. The three brothers began
packing up, securing gear, and turning the boat toward shore.
Speaker 1: And not thirty seconds later, everything changed.
Speaker 2: There was no warning, no time to react. One moment,
they were heading back toward shore, cresting over a wave.
The next, a huge second wave coming from the side,
violently slammed into their boat.
Speaker 3: A rogue wave.
Speaker 2: Before Kyle could even take a breath, his body was
hurled into the deep, churning ocean. His ears filled with
muffled sounds as he clawed at the water, desperate to
reach the surface. When he finally broke through, he took
in a gulp of air, but there was no time
to recover.
Speaker 3: As he bobbed in the swell, his thoughts.
Speaker 2: Turned immediately to his brothers. He spun scanning the water
heart pounding for a moment there was nothing but waves,
and then relief washed over him. There they were, both
Michael and Kevin. But what about the boat?
Speaker 1: And we thought when we popped up out of the water,
the boat had capsized, But as we got our bearings together,
we realized the boat had not capsized.
Speaker 2: Worse than capsizing, the boat had thrown them overboard, then uprighted,
and was now disappearing into the distance.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately the boat was still full throttle and it
was moving away from us in a fast way.
Speaker 2: Kyle felt the raw panic of seeing his only means
of safety vanish into the horizon. There was no possible
way to catch it. He looked around at his brothers.
Like Kyle, they had no life jackets on because they
had all been actively fishing and moving around in the boat,
and the jackets were stored below. In fact, just before
they were thrown overboard, Kyle had mentioned grabbing the life jackets.
Speaker 3: The thought had come only seconds too late.
Speaker 2: Now the boat was gone and the three brothers were
alone in open water, four miles off shore and caught
in a current that was dragging them even farther out
to sea. No one knew of their predicament, and they
weren't expected home for hours. Together, the brothers made some
quick decisions.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a strong current, and we decided
we were going to stick together and separating and trying
to see if we could find help. And we decided
to get as much weight off of us, so we
got our shoes and most of our clothes off. We
had tore up our shirts in the water, trying to
figure it if somebody might come by, we could try
to flag them down in some way.
Speaker 2: Their first instinct was to try to swim. They strained
against the current, but instantly realized the attempt was futile.
Speaker 1: We tried to swim a little bit and within thirty
seconds just completely exhausted, fighting the current but also the waves.
Speaker 2: Kyle's twin, Kevin, was in especially bad shape. Already drained
from seasickness. He struggled to keep himself afloat. As Kyle
battled the waves, he did everything he could to lift
Kevin just enough to keep his head above the surface. Too.
Every minute in the water was work. Every breath had
to be managed, every movement had to be measured slowly, steadily.
Kevin regained enough strength to keep himself from sinking. The
three brothers tried to flow on their backs whenever possible
in order to conserve energy, but the sea would not
allow even that small.
Speaker 3: Mercy for long.
Speaker 2: The swells had become so rough that each time the
brothers tried to rest, waves broke over their faces and
filled their mouths and throats with salt water.
Speaker 1: And that was probably the worst part, just because then
you'd have to pop up and continue treading water. Thankfully,
we were all really good swimmers, but out with no
life jackets, tread and water it was hard.
Speaker 2: Michael, the oldest brother, became the voice of hope in
the water.
Speaker 1: My oldest brother, Michael said, Hey, we're gonna be fine.
We're going to drift in inward to shore, even though
he knew that we weren't drifting towards shore. I think
it was more of him trying to keep us positive.
Speaker 2: The brothers were now about two hours into the ordeal,
and their situation was becoming worse by the minute.
Speaker 3: They were growing tired, losing strength.
Speaker 2: Just then, the three brothers saw something that made their
hearts leap two helicopters hovering.
Speaker 3: In the distance.
Speaker 2: Maybe, just maybe someone had found their boat. And help
was on its way. But even if that were the case,
they knew the odds of anyone finding them, and the
immense ocean were impossibly slim, like trying to find a
single grain of sand on an endless beach. Still, as
they battled the waves, they held onto hope. They kept
their anxious eyes on the distant helicopters. After about thirty minutes,
Kyle noticed that one of the helicopters seemed to be
getting closer and closer.
Speaker 3: It flew straight toward them.
Speaker 2: It was near enough now that the pilot had to
see them.
Speaker 3: This was it, This was their chance for rescue.
Speaker 2: Kyle and his brothers waved their torn shirts and shouted
with everything they had left.
Speaker 1: They came within It felt like one hundred yards from us,
and we were waving and screaming, and they passed right
over us. And then they kind of came around, and
we were, at that moment thought they found us.
Speaker 2: But something was wrong. The helicopter swooped low, then passed
by them, then left gone. It was like a bullet
of acid hit all three men's stomachs at once, and
that's when reality really started to sink in.
Speaker 1: They couldn't see us. We were so small in the water,
and the waves had just gotten worse, about six feet
or so at that time.
Speaker 2: Up until then, there had been hope, the sense that
rescue was possible and perhaps even close. But watching the
coastguard come that near and still miss them forced a
terrible realization to crash over them, like the raging sea
around them. Rescue might be impossible, it might not come
at all. Fear hung over Kyle and his brothers like
a dark shadow. None of the three brothers wanted to
make the others more afraid than they already were, so
outwardly they kept speaking in steady, hopeful tones, but inwardly,
something deeper had begun, and that was the moment Kyle
turned to God, I think.
Speaker 1: It's totally we're all feeling that fear, and I mean,
we're such a small speck in the water at this point.
So that was the I think the moment it panic
began to set it in, and deep sense of prayer
and crying out to the Lord.
Speaker 2: Treading water there in the ocean, the bottomless feeling beneath
his feet, the overwhelming fastness threatening to swallow him and
his brother's hole. Kyle knew he was nothing without God.
The relentless waves stripped away any illusion of control, and
in his helpless state, Kyle was no longer speaking about
God from a distance. He was calling on him, not
out loud, but from deep in Kyle's soul, asking God
to be near and to help Kyle and his brothers
in a way they had never needed before. Facing an
uncertain future and possibly even death, Kyle laid his soul
bare before the Lord.
Speaker 1: It was just recognizing my own sin, I think was
a huge piece of that, Like really understanding the depth
of my sin and what I needed in order to
be right before him.
Speaker 2: Three and a half hours had now passed since Kyle
and his brothers were thrown into the ocean. Even though
this was Florida, the late November water was cold enough
to completely drain their energy, leaving their bodies heavy, shivering,
and exhausted. Kyle continued to plead with God as they drifted,
no one speaking. The only sound came from the roar
of the crashing waves around them. Then, breaking through the monotony,
came a new sound. Faint at first, a distant, familiar,
chopping sound. It grew steadily louder and Kyle's heart raced
as he saw a helicopter flying through the sky toward them.
Speaker 3: Once again, the.
Speaker 2: Brothers yelled and waved their shirts, doing everything.
Speaker 3: To be seen.
Speaker 2: For a moment, it felt like rescue was finally within reach,
But just as before, the helicopter passed overhead, leaving as
quickly as it had around.
Speaker 3: Still, Kyle kept praying. Then unexpectedly, the.
Speaker 2: Helicopter turned it circled back towards them. The brothers looked
pleadingly at the sky, their faces filled with urgency and hope.
This time felt different, This time felt like an answer
to prayer. The helicopter slowed as it approached, flying lower
and closer, until at last it hovered directly above them.
Speaker 1: We didn't think they saw us, but they did circle back,
and they did in fact find us. It was the
US Coast Guard, and they jumped out of the helicopter.
One of the gentlemen swam with us, made sure that
we were all okay. They called in for a sheriff's
boat to come pick us up, so that sheriff's boat
arrived about thirty minutes later, and we just swam with
this Coastguard and then we got on the boat, and
even that boat, which with a much larger share his vote,
that was getting rocked around quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Finally, the three brothers were taken to the shore. When
they made it back, they were not only met by
medical personnel and news cameras, but by their families, who
had spent hours not knowing whether they were alive or dead. Kyle, Kevin,
and Michael were checked medically, given fluids, warmed up, and
released soon afterward. They were sunburned, shaken, and cold in
a way they had not expected cold to feel in
South Florida waters. But they were alive. Their gratitude was overwhelming.
But there was still something Kyle and his brothers didn't know,
and this is why Kyle still speaks of that day
with the kind of awe reserved for things that defy explanation.
Speaker 1: What we found out was the boat actually had gone
perfectly straight into shore, nobody steering it. It could have
gone out to sea and ran out of fuel down
a Cuba, and it could have gone anywhere. But it
had gone perfectly straight in the shore where it crashed
four miles out. And it was somebody else out on
the water who had just been a little bit closer
to shore when he saw this boat full of fishing
gear and nobody driving it, and he was the one
that alerted the authorities.
Speaker 2: Kyle and his brothers couldn't believe it. Almost like Glassie
the dog, their boat had motored straight into the shore
as if to get them help. The brothers knew it
was more than luck. It was more than a boat
running ashore. The brothers knew it was divine intervention. And
as they thought about the miracle they'd experienced, the timing
of everything felt impossible to dismiss. Too many precise things
aligned at exactly the right moment. As soon as the
authorities were alerted, they contacted Michael's wife, Amy, Amy and
Michael had previously gone fishing together, many times, returning to
their favorite spot without fail.
Speaker 1: She was actually supposed to be with us that day,
but she was not feeling well, so she decided to
stay home, which we look back was a miracle because
she knew where we fished. She was able to tell
the authorities, and that helped them in that search process.
Speaker 2: Had Amy gone with the brothers that day as planned,
no one would have had a clue where to look
for them. And not only that, imagine if Amy had
gone treading water for three and a half hours, had
already pushed three healthy men to their limits, for someone
seven months pregnant, the outcome could have been very different.
And that was only part of the miracle. Because the
boat had gone straight to the shore and was discovered
so quickly, helicopters were deployed while there was still daylight,
and after missing the brothers once, the coastguard came back
and found them in a sea vast enough to hide
them forever. Kya later found out that when the authorities
had called his twin brothers family, they had immediately contacted
Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and.
Speaker 1: They had a prayer hotline, and so one of the
first things they did was call and have a team
of people praying for us.
Speaker 2: So many prayers had led up to this rescue. But
for Kyle, the miracle was not only that he survived.
It was what had happened to him while he had
been waiting to be found out there in the deep,
turbulent sea.
Speaker 1: What happened in that water for me personally was even
more significant. I had been in a season of deep
discipleship at my church with our pastor or associate pastor.
He had been pouring into my life in a really
special way. In some weeks we would be together seven
days a week just doing life together, discipleship, Bible study,
and I would say would have said I was a
Christian at that moment. I think from my lips I
would have said that. But it was in the water
that went from my lips to my heart to truly
surrender my life to him. And that was a transforming
day for me. And out of that committed my life
and service to him in ministry. And so now almost
eighteen years later, I've been serving with Wickliffe Bible Translators,
and yeah, it's been amazing.
Speaker 2: God was not finished with Kyle that day.
Speaker 1: He had a greater purpose for me in my life
to serve him, to glorify him and what I would
do following that accident.
Speaker 2: And God wasn't finished with his brothers either, because the
rescue didn't only spare their lives, It changed them. It
strengthened their bond as brothers, It deepened their faith. It
turned a fishing trip into a testimony none of them
could have imagined. And this is the part Kyle never
gets over not just that they survived, but that mercy
seemed to move toward them from every direction at once,
through timing, through people, through prayer, through the unexplainable path
of an empty boat cutting straight toward land, and in
the middle of the waves, when fear was deepest and
hope was smallest, that mercy became personal. Because the greatest
miracle for Kyle that day was not simply that his
body was rescued from the sea. It was that, in
a moment of utter helplessness, his soul was rescued too.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Such an amazing miracle story in so many ways. And
I feel like they need to name this boat Lassie
after this.
Speaker 3: I think that's pretty fitting.
Speaker 4: And if kids don't know who Lassie is long ago,
I think it was like our parents' generation. I used
to watch Reasons of It, but was a TV show
about this dog that would always save the day, go
get help. Last right, Yeah, Timmy's in the well, Lassie
you'd be like rough and go get to me.
Speaker 2: But it is very fitting because they would always send
Lassie out to go get help.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what this boat did. I mean the
boat did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible, Like you think about if the angle
had just changed even slightly from four miles out, who
knows where this boat would have gone.
Speaker 3: Who knows how this would have ended.
Speaker 4: So true.
Speaker 3: But something else interesting.
Speaker 2: We didn't mention in the story is that when this
boat shows up on shore without anybody on it and
it's very unusual, at first, they didn't know what to
think other than maybe this is a crime scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we actually have a SoundBite from Kyle about that,
so let's play that, okay.
Speaker 1: We later found out that when they found it, they
treated it as a potential homicide case, so they didn't
want to enter the boat and move anything around before
they could find out what was going on. So they
did finally enter the boat. They found our cell phones,
probably flip phones back in two thousand and seven, and
called our family members and called my mom first and said, hey,
we found your son's boat. Everybody, but he's missing. And
that's all they told my mom. Three of our four
boys were missing.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 4: I can't even imagine a phone call like that. And
I am so relieved for this mother, oh that she
didn't have to lose her boys.
Speaker 2: I know I have four kids too, and I cannot
imagine losing three of them, it would be so tragic,
so awful, and yet because of God's mercy, they were
actually able to turn this into something really positive for
their family. Kyle said, they're all a lot closer now
than they were before this experience, and I mean it
completely changed the trajectory of his life.
Speaker 3: Dedicated his life to God. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And if you don't know what Wickliffe Bible Translators is,
it's an organization that translates the Bible into languages that
don't yet have access to it. So here's Kyle talking
about it.
Speaker 1: Our founder was in Guatemala as a Spanish Bible salesman,
and he quickly realized that people didn't speak Spanish. And
it was one gentleman from that community that said, if
your God is great, why doesn't he speak our language?
And that totally rocks him. I had no idea the
scale of how many languages there were in the world
and little to no access to God's word. And so
our founder went on to actually translate this Bible was
the ketchikw Bible in Guatemala, and then later after that
found it Wickliffe. And there's over seven thousand languages in
the world. Today, and there's still thousands that don't have
the full council of God's word. And so if you
don't have a Bible in your own language, a language
that you think and you dream and you pray, and
it's hard to fully understand it and then fully see
that transformation.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is crazy. I didn't even know there were
that many languages. I didn't either, And what a cool
mission to be able to bring the Bible to all
of these people who would never be able to read
it otherwise. Yeah, and you think about it, like Kyle
may not have even gone into this career if it hadn't.
Speaker 3: Been here that day in the water. It's just amazing
how God works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and let's talk about what happened in the water
that day, because first of all, I'm so glad Amy
didn't go into that water with those guys.
Speaker 2: I know, you think about her morning, she wakes up sick.
She was probably super disappointed that she couldn't go. She
had to miss out all the fun. But if she
had gone, oh my goodness, Like I've gone swimming when
I was pregnant.
Speaker 3: It is not as easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I imagine treading water and somebody hands you
a bowling ball, like, yeah, seriously, it's so hard.
Speaker 3: It would not I don't know, it would not have
turned out well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I was thinking about that, and I thought,
you know, we can kind of all learn from that,
because how many times do you have your day planned
out or your life planned out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then God.
Speaker 4: Has a different idea of how things should go, or
things just don't go the way you think they should go,
and pretty soon you look back at it.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it takes a few years and you can see why.
Speaker 4: But in high yeah, you can see God's plan all
along and see how he guided you and helped you
the whole time.
Speaker 3: Right, And like, think about these brothers.
Speaker 2: They're like out in the water probably thinking like why
is this happening? Why would God allow this to happen?
And yet they received this amazing miracle.
Speaker 3: I mean the.
Speaker 2: Fact that these helicopters found them with this choppy water,
there were all these white caps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like it was hey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Kyle even mentioned that it was a blessing
that he happened to have a bright red shirt.
Speaker 3: On yeah at day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think about like a gray shirt or brown, Yeah, and.
Speaker 4: You combine all of that with the boat right, and
when you just look at all of it together, it's
impossible to not see this as a miracle.
Speaker 3: Absolutely a miracle.
Speaker 2: You know. I have gone deep sea fishing one time,
and there's a reason I went.
Speaker 3: One time.
Speaker 2: We were in the Dominican Republic and we went deep
sea fishing and they called U the day before and said, hey,
we need to cancel and postpone U till later than
the week. The waves are too big. And we're like, okay, well,
our only available day is tomorrow. And they thought about
it for a minute. They're like, okay, we could do that. Well,
I didn't realize that no one was supposed to go
out the next day. But they didn't want to lose
their money. They knew it was then or not never. Yeah,
and they didn't tell us that, so they took us
out deep sea fishing. Oh my goodness, these waves were
massive and everyone in the boat was throwing up and
it was just so terrifying and we were just like,
take us back, this is awful.
Speaker 3: We get back and they're.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, hey, somebody died here. Their boat capsized yesterday.
Speaker 3: Right there in that same dan.
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, body washed up yesterday, boat just like
capsized and we're.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, that's horrible, Oh my gosh, it.
Speaker 2: Was so tragic, but experiencing what it feels like to
be among those massive waves, yeah, I don't know how
they swam through that, especially without life jackets. Yeah three, and.
Speaker 3: They don't either.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: And by the way, Emily, you could have been on
the Miracle files, So don't.
Speaker 3: Do that again. I'll try not to. I don't want
to be on the Miracle file. No, you don't. Probably.
Speaker 4: I mean, the miracles are amazing and people are always
grateful for what they go through. But yeah, let's try
to avoid situations like that anyway. But I also wanted
to say that there are lessons in every one of
our stories for people to learn, and I hope our
listeners are listening for those, because, for example, in this story,
I think there's a clear lesson where your life jackets?
Speaker 3: Where are your life jackets?
Speaker 2: So so, Anna's so interesting that Kyle mentioned that right
before their boat capsized, he had this thought, we need
to get our life jackets, and then he just waited.
And it's like, if you get those properties from.
Speaker 4: The hotels feeling act fast act and not wait.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yep, it's true.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you everyone for listening today, and thank you
so much to our listeners who have reached out to
us through social media or email. Don't hesitate to reach
out to us because we love it. We love getting
to meet you and you do. As always, please leave
us review if you'd be so kind, and make sure
to share this podcast with your friends and family and
have a wonderful week. Thank you for joining us. If
you have a miracle to share, contact us at the
Miracle files dot com or find us on social media.
Speaker 3: We release new episodes each Monday. Yes, so don't forget
Miracle Mondays.
Speaker 2: Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube for amazing
video content as well.
Speaker 4: Join us next time as we discover more of God's miracles,
and don't forget to look for His light in your
own lives.