Answer to prayer not delayed

Sometimes I forget to be thankful for prayers answered. I pray for a safe trip, nothing happens, and I forget to pray and give thanks.

I was thinking of a miraculous event that happened a couple of weeks ago. I was using my machete to cut off branches from some tree limbs I had cut down. I have a sharp machete, and with a lot of practice I have learned to strike hard, severing the branches in a single blow. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but as I was striking down in an arch the machete slipped from my grasp. I felt the wind of the blade as it passed between my legs and continued on for another ten or fifteen feet. I was untouched.

At the time I thought to myself, "That was close." It was only much later that I realized how miraculously I had been spared from a serious cut. As usual that morning I had prayed that we might be spared "harm or accident" that day. There was the answer to my prayer, fortunately not delayed, and I hardly appreciated it.

I think I may have been a Catholic once.

When I was six years old, way back in 1953, I was very sick. I was taken to a hospital unconscious, and I stayed unconscious for a week. It was a Catholic hospital, and when it looked certain that I would die they asked my parents if I was spiritually prepared for death. They were shocked to find out that I had not yet been baptized. My parents said that they believed I didn't need baptism before I was eight years old. They said "no thank you," to the hospital's invitation to have me baptized.

In what seems to me to be a little bit of deception they told my parents to go home and get some rest. They actually thought that I would not make it through the night, but evidently to those Catholics it was more important for me to have the last sacrament than to have my parents there when I died. After my parents left they invited in a Catholic priest. The next day they told my parents that a Catholic priest had given me the "last rites."

Now, as I understand it, the Catholic church considers it evil to give any of their seven sacraments to non Catholics. Which makes me wonder, did the priest also baptize me into the Catholic church? In the eyes of the Catholic church, did I become a Catholic before or after the last rites?

And by the way, my parents felt that what the hospital had done was a kind and loving thing to do. They didn't resent it, and they really did need the rest. However, had I actually died they might have been upset that they weren't at the hospital when I died.

I also had a priesthood blessing from the elders of the LDS church, and God miraculously healed me.