Testimony of Rachel's Park

Testimony of Rachel's Park,
A Baby's Cry

The following testimony that is written for your consideration, I commit before God is true. It is given solely for the glory of God and to reveal to men, both believer and unbeliever alike, that the God of Heaven still moves in mysterious and miraculous ways to fulfill His will in the earth.

A few months ago in the summer of 2000, my family and I drove to our church, Church on the Rock. While I was working in the office, my wife and children remained outside playing on the playground. All of a sudden, a strange occurence took place. One of my adorable children ran in to tell me, "Daddy, we keep hearing the sound of a baby crying!" All of my children heard it and my wife heard it several times, so I went out to investigate. Sure enough, when I approached the playground, I distinctly heard the cry of a baby. It was clear the tiny infant was in pain, distressed and in need of immediate help. The sound was coming from the lower area of the Church's property.

Diligently I began to search and call out to know avail. I then ran inside the church and called the police. When the police and the media arrived, we again searched throughout the wooded area and even drove around the surrounding neighborhood in a great effort to find something even remotely associated with a cry of a tiny hurting baby. We could not find anyone or anything that was the source of this disturbing, haunting cry of a little one. I couldn't understand it, nor even try to explain it. The only suggestions the police offered was "perhaps the sound was coming from a daycare center closeby or a child crying in the neighborhood." The problem with their suggestions was that the cry we heard didn't come from a child, it was clearly the sound of a tiny hurting baby.

Though this experience was strange and eerie, to say the least, as the months passed by, we didn't think much about it, that is, until recently. The Lord laid on my heart a vision of creating a memorial to the unborn called Rachel's Park, based upon the Scripture in Jeremiah 31 where Rachel is weeping for her children who were no more (Jeremiah 31:15). When I approached my pastor, John Wachsmann, about the idea, we agreed that it should be a permanent site, one right there on the same property where months earlier we had heard the cries. Of course, at the time I never made the connection between the cry of the hurting baby and our proposed permanent site for Rachel's Park.

That all changed two days later, when at our regular Wed. night service, on Dec. 6th, a member of our church, Govina Thompson, approached my wife during the service with great concern saying, "Liz, count all your children. I just heard the sound of a baby crying near your van." My wife immediately made a diligent search and all of our children were present and accounted for. Govina then rushed to the different nurseries to make sure all the other children from our church were there and that none had slipped outside where the sound of the crying was heard. None were missing. Coincidentally, our van just happened to be parked near the site that we initially heard the crying of a lost, hurting baby months earlier.

Today, Dec. 7th, in the year of our Lord, 2000, I was made fully aware of the startling manifestation of the second time a cry of a baby was being heard directly from the proposed site for a Cemetery of the Innocents and the Memorial for the Unborn. When the connection was made, the power of God and His anointing absolutely overwhelmed me. I broke and cried uncontrollably for quite sometime. Ever person involved that saw and heard these things will testify of God's Spirit falling upon them as well. Needless to say, a great awe has come upon us as we realize that the ground set aside for the consecration of Rachel's Park had already been hallowed for this purpose by the cry of a baby long before we ever even conceived the vision. A cry from a missing, hurting baby that we believe says, "Remember me and what you have done to me and what you have left undone." May this testimony spread far and wide and may God use it to make Rachel's Park a reality.

In King Jesus' Service,
Rusty Lee Thomas

Webmaster's Note: If you would like more information, seeThe Vision of Rachel's Park.