Speaker 1: Joshua's heart sank. He realized he was lost. The darkness
in the mind wasn't just an absence of light, it
felt alive.
Speaker 2: I'm stumbling, just walking in the dark, as if I
were blind, and at this point I realized that I
had gone a wrong way.
Speaker 1: Joshua's father waited outside the mine. After a while, leaders
and scouts began exiting, but boy after boy appeared and
no Joshua.
Speaker 2: My father was feeling this horrible feeling. Where's my son.
Speaker 1: This is the Miracle Files.
Speaker 3: I'm Emily Jones and I'm Holly Worthington. We're two sisters
who love a captivating true story, but we're also seeking
more light in our lives.
Speaker 1: So we're on a mission to find and share unforgettable,
uplifting stories of God's meals. We hope you'll join us
on this journey.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Miracle Files. We have a remastered
episode for you today. And if you're wondering why we're
remastering some of our early episodes, it's because.
Speaker 1: We've come a long way, baby, a long way.
Speaker 3: Yes, we've learned so much over the years, and yeah,
a lot of our new listeners haven't even heard our
earliest episodes. So yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually just met a woman the other day and
she was telling me that she had binge listened to
all of our episodes, and she pointed that out. She
was like, yeah, listening to your episodes now feels a
little different than your early episodes. So yeah, it was
kind of fun revisiting it is some of our early episodes.
Give them a little TLC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this episode originally aired on the first anniversary
of our podcast, and now we're about three years into
this thing, so it feels crazy to say that, but
this is a really good episode and it still gives
me chills when I hear the ending, So please enjoy
The Boy and the Mind.
Speaker 1: Someone was coming down the mine shaft. Joshua's group turned
their flashlights off and listened to the approaching footsteps. The
darkness permeated everything. It was the type of darkness where
even a sense of up and down gets lost in
the black void. This boy Scout camping trip was one
ten year old Joshua Dennis had been anticipating along with
his father. He'd traveled to Jacob City, an old, ghostly
mining town tucked away in the rugged wilderness. But the
real lur of the trip, the one that made Joshua's
heart race, was the Hidden Treasure Mine. This mine wasn't
just a dark hole in the earth. It was a
vast labyrinth of tunnels, spanning over twenty miles and six
levels deep. The mine steps were a mystery, an invitation
to adventure, but as with all adventure, there was a
shadow of danger, a sense that once you climbed into
its opening, the mine could swallow you whole. On this
cool Friday night in September, Joshua and his father had
joined the other scouts to explore the mine. They soon
split into smaller groups to begin the journey inside. Two
groups went ahead of Joshua's own party, which consisted of Joshua,
his dad, and three other scouts.
Speaker 2: Here's Joshua, and between the five of us, we had
two flashlights, so I was holding my dad's flashlight, and
then another boy had a flashlight, and we were going
down the tunnel together, and we stopped to look around
a bit, and we decided to turn off our flashlights
just to get that feeling of the darkness, just to
see how dark it was inside of mine. And we
put our hands in front of our faces, and it's
just like how you imagine. You can't see anything and
your eyes can't adjust to anything because there's no light
that can penetrates. Just the darkest that you could ever experience.
As So, as we continue down the main tunnel that
we hear some noise coming from the distance. Realized that
it's probably one of the other adult leaders coming down.
So we decided to turn off our lights again and hide,
and we're going to scare this person.
Speaker 1: Joshua blinked at the black abyss in front of him.
He could only hear the sound of his breath. Finally,
he turned his flashlight back on when his scout master
jumped out and scared the living daylights out of Joshua
and his group. After everyone had a good laugh, the
scout master told Joshua's dad that his own group was
just up ahead if they wanted to join them. The
scout master had heard Joshua's group talk and had come
to invite them to explore the mind together, but he
left his own party momentarily without a leader and needed
to hurry back to them. Unfortunately, it was at this
moment that one of the boys in Joshua's father's group
asked if he could go back outside. The boy was
visually impaired and found it difficult enough to see in
the daylight, let alone in a pitch black mine. Joshua's
dad agreed to take the boy back. The scout master
and two other boys hurried away to catch up with
the other group. Joshua handed the flashlight to his dad,
who told Joshua to come with him, but Joshua wanted
to stay. He begged his father to let him turn
around and join the other boys. Joshua's father relented as
he reluctantly turned to go, He told Joshua to hurry
and catch up with the rest of the group before
their light got too far away. The scout master led
the other two boys further into the mind. Joshua struggled
to catch up with them. Without a flashflight. His only
light came from the scout master and boys ahead, who
moved too quickly for him to reach them. Soon, they
turned a distant corner, leaving Joshua alone in complete and
utter blackness. As he felt his way along, Joshua's heart sank.
He realized he was lost. The darkness in the mind
wasn't just an absence of light. It felt alive pressing
in on him from every side. He called out, but
no one answered.
Speaker 2: And I stop. I don't continue going forward, and I
look behind me. Dad's gone, can't see anything. And my
immediate reaction was to say a prayer. That was something
that I'd always learned ever since. I can remember parents
teaching us as kids that we could pray, remember where
we are, that God knows you, and he knows where
you are, and he's always listening. And that was a
very comforting feeling for me. And so I say a prayer,
and even though I'm already in the dark, I close
my eyes like a little boy would, and I say
a prayer, and I asked God to help me to
be able to find my way out. We hadn't gone
too far into the mind, so I thought maybe I
could feel alongside the wall and I could find my
way out. And as I'm doing so, I'm stumbling, just
walking in the dark as if I were blind, feeling around,
and I start going upward. And this particular mind, the
entrance at the time when we went in was basically
just a hole in the ground and have to lower
yourself in until it opens up into the main tunnel,
and so at first I thought that I was getting closer,
so I keep going up, and I realized that I'm
climbing higher and higher and higher, and I'm slipping a
little bit down, and I keep going until it levels
off a bit. And at this point I realized, in
the dark, as I'm trying to imagine where I was,
that I had gone a wrong way. And at that moment,
I decided to do something that my mother also taught
us as children. She says, if you're ever lost, stay
where you are.
Speaker 1: So that's what Joshua did. He stayed where he was.
As the hours ticked past, Joshua grew cold and tired,
he sat on the ground. He napped, and would awaken
opening his eyes, finding that his eyes did him no good.
He frequently called out into the darkness, but only silence
would answer him. Joshua's father waited outside thee with the
boy who had wanted to leave. After a while, leaders
and scouts began exiting. Joshua's dad watched anxiously to see
his son's head pop out of the dark mouth of
the mine, but boy after boy appeared and no Joshua.
When the last of the group came out.
Speaker 4: Worry immediately set in, and it was just this horrible
feeling when no one else was coming out, and where's
my son?
Speaker 1: Joshua's father and the others spent the next agonizing hours
looking throughout the mind for Joshua, calling out his name,
hoping that at any moment his young voice would respond,
but no one could find a trace of him. The
search went late into the night. By morning it turned
into a more organized effort. However, time and again it
seemed as if Joshua had just disappeared. Joshua's dad felt
absolutely sick. Where could his son be? How could he
possibly call his wife and tell her that he had
lost their son, that their son was somehow alone in
the dark, cold belly of a maze like mine. He
kept hoping that at any moment Joshua would be found,
that he would see his son's bright smile, that they
would return home together. What a story they would have
to tell. But as the day wore on, Joshua was
still missing. The sheriff and his deputies took over the search,
limiting who could enter the mine. Even Joshua's father wasn't
allowed inside anymore. He felt sick knowing he would need
to call his wife and tell her. He wanted to
keep searching, but the sheriff and search and rescue team
didn't want to risk any more life. Joshua's father knew
he had to face the inevitable.
Speaker 2: That time long passed and he realized that he needed
to tell my mother and he was afraid, feeling tremendously guilty,
thinking how am I going to tell her that I
lost our son.
Speaker 1: Joshua's mother was devastated at the news, but to her
husband's surprise, she didn't blame him. Instead, she immediately began
praying that someone would find her son. Family and friends
soon learned of the missing boy and offered to help
in the search, but the sheriff felt responsible for the
searcher's safety. He had buttoned up the search tightly so
that no one would get in without his permission.
Speaker 2: Even though they can be very interesting and exciting to explore,
they're very dangerous. There's mind shafts, so you can be
walking down a tunnel and then there's a vertical shaft
that goes straight down hundreds of feet. They're very unstable,
so they're caving in at different time. You know, timbers
that are support beams that are holding up the structure
rot and eventually give way and they cave in. So
there's just parts of the tunnels that just collapse. There's
also dynamite that have been left in there after they
were done working and they stop production. They wouldn't go
and remove everything out of them. They would just leave everything,
leave equipment, leave tools, clothing, sometimes even boots and helmets,
and dynamite. And in this mine there was dynamite and
they found as they were searching for me. They found
it in a couple of different spots, and it's very volatile.
You could be walking and just kick it and it
would explode because it's so volatile.
Speaker 1: Far away, John Skinner, a historian who lived near the area,
was on a research trip in Montana investigating the history
of mining. His mining expertise ran deep, and he had
spent years exploring the hidden treasure mine out of the Blue.
John felt a strong, unexplainable premeni to return home early,
even though his trip was far from over. Trusting the feeling,
he cut his trip short and headed back home. When
John arrived on Saturday morning, his wife greeted him with
surprise and some heartbreaking news. A young boy had gone
missing in the Hidden Treasure Mine, and the Sheriff's office
had been searching for him. They had stopped by John's
house earlier, hoping to get maps of the mine to
aid in the search. Without hesitation, John offered to help.
Given his extensive knowledge of the mine, passed down from
his grandfather, who had been its superintendent, he felt certain
he could assist the rescue effort. However, when John reached
out to the Sheriff's office, they declined his offer, confident
that they had everything under control. John's heart raced. His
extensive knowledge of the mine's layout felt like a key.
But it was more than just that, the unshakable feeling
that he was supposed to help pursue. John knew he
had to act. Three days past with Joshua sitting alone
in the cold, dark mind, three days of searching with
no luck, Three days of his parents' hearts desperately waiting, hoping, praying,
worrying about the kind of suffering their child was going through.
Speaker 2: Minds are interesting. They keep a constant temperature that's always
pretty chilly, and so this mine was about fifty five
degrees fahrenheit. So I felt cold. I put my arms
inside my coat, zipped up and trying to preserve my
body heat. Before I went into the mine, I had
grabbed a handful of licorice nibs and I had stuffed
them out of my pocket, and so as I started
feeling hungry, I hate those and kind of sucked on
them to make them last so longer. But I started
feeling really hungry, started feeling very thirsty.
Speaker 1: As the days and nights were on, Joshua began to
experience serious dehydration.
Speaker 2: My mouth was extremely dry, became kind of sticky, kind
of felt like I had cotton in my mouth, just
so so dry and no saliva, just very thick and
foul tasting.
Speaker 1: His desperate hunger caused him to dream of food.
Speaker 2: I had a dream that was very strange. I had
dreamt that I was at school in the cafeteria and
it was lunchtime and I was waiting in a long
line to get lunch, and it was dark in there.
It was like unusually dark, so like the darkness of
the mine was like just kind of seeping into my
subconscious and I was really excited because we were going
to have hamburgers and fries for school lunch, and I
was so hungry, and I take my tray to go
sit down, and I'd glanced away just for a moment,
and I look and my food it disappeared. So it
was just this weird dream of feeling so hungry but
there's nothing to eat. And I wake up and I
had a rock in my hand and I had pressed
it to my mouth like I was trying to eat something.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, staying at a nearby motel, Joshua's parents prayed with
all their hearts. Word had spread throughout the country of
Joshua's disappearance and countless prayers were being offered on his behalf.
Still as they approached the fifth day, his parents couldn't
help but fear the worst.
Speaker 2: So at this time, of course, my parents were suffering,
feeling that I would never be found, that they had
lost their son. My father was feeling extremely guilty. Why
did I take my son to this camp, Why did
I let him go with the other boys, and why
didn't I keep them with me? And it was just
extremely painful for my parents.
Speaker 1: Also waiting and hoping the boy would be found was
historian John Skin, who continued to get a nagging feeling
again and again, he ventured to the mine and asked
the sheriff if he could help. Each time the sheriff
would turn him away, and John Skinner would return home
wondering what more he could do. On the fifth day,
the sheriff had very bad news for Joshua's parents. The
search and rescue crew had combed the mine thoroughly. The
chance of Joshua still being alive was impossibly low.
Speaker 2: And so as time went on, the sheriff realized that
they could not continue the search indefinitely, that at some
point they would need to call off the search and
accept the inevitable. And my parents were suffering with that,
grappling with maybe never knowing what happened to their son
and accepting that I had died and that they would
never know and would never even recover my body.
Speaker 1: As the search was winding down, once again, John Skinner
drove to the mine, approached the sheriff.
Speaker 2: And he makes it up to the mind's sight and
he talks to the sheriff and he says, I think
I might know a couple of places where he could be.
He just had a feeling, That's that's how he described it,
just a feeling that he knew where I was, and
two of the men on the mine rescue team overheard
this conversation.
Speaker 1: The two men told the sheriff they wanted to take
John Skinner into the mine with them and have him
show them the spots he was thinking of. But the
sheriff was ultimately responsible for everyone's safety, so once again
he said no, But this time John had allies. The
two men insisted the sheriff allowed them to take John
with them. The sheriff analyzed the faces of the three men.
John had tried so many times to help and this
was a last ditch effort. The sheriff finally agreed to
let them go in. It was about two o'clock in
the afternoon.
Speaker 2: And this basically was officially the last attempt. In fact,
they were kind of calling people back the search and
rescue and making sure that no one else was in
the mine. You were asking him to exit. So these
three men go in and John Skinner leads.
Speaker 1: Them deep into the belly of the mine. John led
the men to the first location he'd felt Joshua might
be in. The men shined their lights into the darkness,
hoping to finally see a small ten year old body
dead or alive. They desperately wanted to bring him home
to his parents. As they neared the location, the three
men went silent. Nothing no sign of a ten year
old boy. They headed to the next location, still hopeful
that John's feelings had been correct. Again, nothing, no Joshua,
no sign of anyone. At this exact moment, Joshua's mother
was kneeling and praying. She felt the warmth of peace
and God's embrace around her. She felt maybe her son
had passed on now. She couldn't be certain, but she
accepted that whatever God had in store for her, it
would be okay. She climbed into bed, exhausted and closed
her eyes, ready to take a nap. Meanwhile, rescue crews
exited the mine. The rescue operation was being called off.
John told the two men that accompanied him that he
wanted to just check one more place, with hope dimming,
The two men followed. When they reached the third location,
they shined their lights into every nook and cranny, but
again there was no sign of the boy. This was
the last possible place John Skinner could think to look.
He had been certain that his feelings were correct, but
in this third location, all the three men could see
was the dark, cavernous mind empty once again. Then something
inexplainable happened.
Speaker 2: And as they're in this spot, one of the mine
rescue volunteers ears a very faint sound and it was
peculiar that he heard it. His name is ray Eamond,
because he actually is hard of hearing, and in fact,
he would joke around saying that to maintain his position
on the mine rescue team, he would have to take
a physical and he would always fail the hearing test
and he would have to kind of cheat to squeak
through so he could maintain his status on the team.
But he hears a sound and he's kind of doubting,
maybe for a second, that he's hearing something, and he
asked the other two if they heard something, and they hadn't,
and he asked them to be quiet. And he describes
it as hearing a fake sound but also feeling something,
feeling something to tell him, pay attention, listen, and so
in complete silence, they're listening and they all hear a
faint cry for help and they yell out and it
was it was me.
Speaker 1: Joshua had been sleeping when he'd heard some distant sounds
that awoke him. Finally, after days in the mind, hope
was near. But even then, Joshua's location was so difficult
to find that the three men couldn't determine where his
cries were coming from. They called out to him to
keep yelling, and the.
Speaker 2: Three scatter looking all around, just seeing if he was
coming from below from above.
Speaker 1: The three men encouraged Joshua to keep making noise. It
seemed they had to be getting close. And then, at last,
after five days of darkness, Joshua's eyes saw the most
beautiful thing light.
Speaker 2: And finally I see a light illuminate this little narrow
tunnel that I had crawled into, a little ore cavity,
and I hear someone yelling up to me and saying
to make my way down to him. And then he
scoops me up and starts carrying me down. I had
climbed up into this little pocket, and all I can
hear is these men saying, thank God, we found him.
Speaker 1: But here's where the story gets really strange and quite
frankly wonderful, because for Joshua, it felt as if only
one day had passed.
Speaker 2: And I'm very confused. I don't know who these men are.
I was expecting my dad or one of the other
leaders from our group to find me, and one of
the men says, we're going to take you to your
mom and dad. I think he was trying to comfort
me or help me feel it was okay that I
was safe with them, and I said something that was
very peculiar to him. I told him that my dad
was outside, but my mom was at home. Just in
my mind, I was thinking I was on a camping
trip and that it was the next day.
Speaker 1: The three men, perplexed, explained to Joshua that he had
been down in the mine for five days and that
it was now Wednesday. Joshua couldn't wrap his brain around
that thought at all. While he'd been alone in the
mind for five days, he experienced something completely miraculous. Time
didn't pass for Joshua like it had for everyone else,
and as incredible as it sounds, he hadn't once felt
scared or alone.
Speaker 2: But I felt okay. I had been very hungry, very thirsty,
that apparently had been severely dehydrated, and my feet were swollen.
I'd got frostbited on my feet. But other than that,
I felt good. I felt fine. But one thing that
I definitely felt, and it's difficult when I've shared this
experience for others to believe, is that I didn't feel afraid,
and I also didn't feel alone. And as I was
in the emergency room, lying on a gurney being treated,
my mom and dad were just beside themselves, moments before
they were accepting the loss of their son, that I
was dead and gone and they would never know what happened.
It would be a complete mystery to me being alive
and well and right in front of them. And I
told my mom angels were with me, And for my
mother that moment was just so comforting for her to
feel that her son was protected and he was watched
over and then he didn't suffer. And that's really the
only way that I know how to describe what I felt.
It was like it's described in the New Testament. The
Apostle Paul talks about a piece, a piece that passes understanding,
and it was what I felt. It was something that's undescribable,
something that doesn't logically make sense, something that you don't
think is possible, but is what I experienced. God knew
where I was, even though I was in the dark.
Speaker 1: God had been with Joshua, and his angels had comforted him,
and a kind man had listened to God's voice tell
him where to find a ten year old stranger lost
in a dark, dangerous place. Joshua says he doesn't know
why he received a miracle when others haven't, but he
does know his experience was a manifestation of divine power.
As life has gone on for Joshua, he has leaned
on this experience himself to help him always remember that
God is real and he loves each of us.
Speaker 2: My dad said something to me shortly after it happened
that's resonated with me ever since. He said, someday you
will need to rely on the faith you had when
you were lost on the mind. And that's been true
for me over and over again, because if we get older,
we might have bad experiences, or we get a little
more cynical, or it's not as easy to believe and
to trust. And so I've reflected back on the faith
that I had as a child, and you start to
understand a little bit more why Jesus uses children as
examples of faith, and it's because they have this trust
in God as a child to trust their parents, and
so it doesn't matter how old you are, you know,
it's never too late to have faith as a child
and to believe in miracles.
Speaker 1: The rescue of Joshua Dennis wasn't profound only to him,
but to all involved in his rescue and to us.
It's a reminder of the power of faith, prayer, and
listening to those quiet premonitions that come when least expected.
In a mind where darkness seemed all consuming, God's love
still found a way to shine through.
Speaker 3: Listening to this episode again really reminded me how important
it is to teach your children that God is there
for them. Like I can't imagine how frightening and alone
Joshu would have felt if he didn't know that he
could pray and receive that help and comfort.
Speaker 1: I know I'm an adult and I would have been
terrified in that situation, But I think about my own
kids when they're scared at night and they come and
talk to me. My answer is always the same, Have
you prayed because God can comfort you, God can protect you.
And I'm just so grateful for that presence of peace when.
Speaker 3: You need it. Yeah, and my kids did the same thing.
They would come in, they'd be scared, and we would
pray with them, and it seemed like it really just
brought them so much comfort and peace at those moments, right,
And I absolutely believe that angels attended to Joshua in
that mind. It was such a beautiful, powerful gift from above,
I know.
Speaker 1: And the thing that really stood out to me is
how he experienced time different, Oh yeah, and how for
everyone else it was days Like I would assume that
you would feel like the hours just feel endless when
you're alone in the dark. I know, you think it
would go by so slow. Yeah, and it didn't. And
that's such a mercy from God, such a mercy. And
I think that happens a lot like God doesn't always
just take away our trials, our challenges, but he helps
us through them.
Speaker 3: Yes, he carries us through them. How often do we
hear people say that when they were going through these
horrible experiences, they didn't experience pain like they thought they
would because their bodies go into shock.
Speaker 1: Yeah. God is so merciful, he is. And you know,
one thing that I kept wondering about was should Joshua
had followed his mom's advice to stay put? Oh yeah,
because like, that's what I tell my kids, Like, if
you get lost, huge tree, stay where you're at. And
yet like he stayed in this little hiding spot where
they couldn't find him, And so I thought, was that
good advice? Should he have followed it?
Speaker 3: Uh? Huh?
Speaker 1: But here's what Joshua said about it. If I would
have stayed where I was at the point of separation,
I wouldn't have gotten lost. As the scout master and
other boys were leaving the mine, they would have found me.
But once I realized I couldn't find my way out
of the mind, I decided to stay where I was.
This was important because wandering in the dark increased my
chances of falling down a mind shaft or running into
volatile dynamite, which was found in the mine in multiple
places during the rescue. The lesson is wandering in the
dark is dangerous both physically and spiritually.
Speaker 3: I love that wandering in the dark is dangerous both
physically and spiritually.
Speaker 1: So true well, and it gave me a new perspective
because you know, obviously it would have been better if
he just stayed put right when he got lost, But
when he realized that he was lost, he could have
wandered deeper into the mine, he could have gotten hurt,
he could have died. And instead, he stayed put and
he chose to have faith that he would be found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And another really cool.
Speaker 3: Thing that Joshua shared with us is that after this happened,
he received a letter from President Bush Senior at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So cool, and I love this letter.
Speaker 3: Will you read this for us, Emily.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right. It says, dear Joshua, I have just
learned of your miraculous rescue from the mine, and I
am so happy to hear that you were found to
be safe and unharmed. Your determination and faith are to
be commended. The rescue workers and volunteers who work together
to find you are important examples of all Americans. America
is great because of such instances of neighbor helping neighbor
in time of need. Your community shown as one of
the thousand points of light in helping with your rescue mission,
and you should be proud to have such an admirable
community standing behind you as parents. Barbara and I share
the joy and excitement of your parents in your safe
return home. Joshua, your experience serves as a testimony that
miracles do happen. You are a very special and fortunate
young man. Best wishes for the future, and make God
bless you. Sincerely, George Bush.
Speaker 3: Oh, that is such a beautiful letter. Yes, and I
love that he says a thousand points of light. It
just makes me think of all those people searching in
the dark for this little boy. Yeah, and it just
makes me think like, sometimes our world can seem so
negus and dark and awful, but there are so many
people who are points of light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just have to look around us to see it. Yeah, absolutely,
all right, Well, we want to thank Joshua again for
sharing this story with us. I just love that this
is such a great example to try to have faith
like a little child like Joshua did in that mind.
So thank you, Joshua. If you guys haven't already subscribed
to our podcast, make sure you subscribe, leave us a review.
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: We'll see you then.