Faith Like a Child

I recently returned from a 3-week holiday to Japan with my husband and two kids. While we were there, my daughter Summer had a pretty special experience with God. We call her our little Prayer Warrior and you’ll see why. 

So this is her testimony and it started on Friday 14th April 2023. 

We were at Akihabara, Tokyo doing some shopping for toys and souvenirs. There were 8 floors of, what looked like the same thing over and over to me – endless pokemon cards, anime cards, anime toys, and just a small selection of girly toys. 

In the midst of it all, Summer found one LOL Surprise toy which was heavily discounted because there was no box. I almost didn’t buy it for her because I thought it might have been damaged but she didn’t care, and nor did my husband. 

After all the shopping we headed to a cafe for some lunch and while we were there, Summer, sitting opposite me, opened up her toy and started playing with it. 

All was fine until towards the middle of lunch. She hands me the toy across the table and said she’s ripped off a piece of the doll’s clothing and she can’t find it and she wants me to help her fix it.

If you haven’t seen a LOL doll’s clothing before, it is made of soft, flexible rubber and each panel of the clothing is joined by an even thinner rubber. It is made so that you can tear the joining pieces apart. But once it’s ripped, it’s ripped – there is no going back.

I took the doll off her and looked at it and sure enough, she’s ripped off the back left panel of the clothing.

We had a quick look around but couldn’t find it and I said to her “Even if we did find it, I can’t even glue it back together anyway. There’s nothing I can do about it.” 

As a side note, Summer really, really does not like it when we say “There’s nothing I can do about it.” We’ve used that line a million times in various scenarios when we genuinely and sincerely cannot help her any further. But one day, after my husband said it to her, she actually said to him “I hate it when you say that,” and he responded with “I’m sorry but I don’t know what you want me to do….I really cannot do anything further. What do you want me to do?” And her response was “well you can pray for it,” ….so we learned a valuable lesson that day because she was absolutely right – even when we can’t do anything about it, God can……

Though obviously, I need to be reminded of this lesson again. 

So back to the LOL doll, I said “Even if we did find it, I can’t even glue it back together anyway. There’s nothing I can do about it” and handed the doll back to her. She took it back but was not pleased with my response. 

Little did I know, she went to God and prayed for him to fix the doll for her. 

So we went home and the evening continues as normal. She continues to play with her doll on the dining table and the next day (Saturday), we head out all day but she left the doll behind at the hotel.

So we are out all day on Saturday, exploring our last days in Japan and catching up with some friends there.  We get back to the hotel quite late and immediately she’s straight to the dining table and starts playing with her doll again. 

I sat down opposite her and was busy sending some text messages when Summer casually says “Look Mum, He’s fixed it for me.” I took the doll from her, flipped it over and absent-mindedly glanced at it and said “Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” and as I was handing it back to her she said “God’s fixed it,” and that’s when it clicked what she was trying to show me. I quickly took it back from her and my jaw just dropped. The rubber clothing that was ripped and missing was on the doll again, intact and like new! (see images below)

I was completely speechless. My jaw was still open, eyes wide in shock with the doll still in my hand and looking at her for an explanation. She’s just sitting there smiling innocently at me. When I finally managed to put some words together I said “What happened? I don’t get it, how? What? Tell me,” and she said “I prayed for it twice and He fixed it for me,” I asked her “Twice? When?” I wanted to know more, I wanted all the details – I’m still flabbergasted and awe-struck by this. Then she said “I prayed twice, once at the cafe after you gave it back to me and I prayed again later when I lost the 2nd piece,” WHAT?? She pointed to the 2nd piece on the right that I didn’t even know was torn off – I didn’t see this myself, but she said it was ripped off too and so she prayed again for God to fix it. 

I then asked her “How did you pray for it to be fixed?” and she said, “I just said Thank You God for fixing my doll.” Then she took the doll back from me and kept playing as though the most amazing thing did not just happen.

 A couple of years ago, I heard a Pastor tell the story of when he was a kid, he had a little rabbit that was born with only one eye. He was really sad and wanted his rabbit to have 2 eyes so he prayed and prayed for the rabbit to have 2 eyes. He woke up the next day and his rabbit had 2 eyes! He said he doesn’t know how it happened, it just happened. I couldn’t understand how a rabbit can grow another eye overnight, but honestly, after seeing this for myself with Summer’s prayers – it just happens. There’s no other way to describe it. It just looks perfectly new again. 

Front of LOL doll

The image above shows what a LOL doll looks like and the rubber outfit it comes with. The back left panel (circled in yellow) is the piece that broke off and was missing. The right panel is the one that Summer said broke off later. It’s only a fine thin rubber that holds it in place (as she already ripped off the sleeves from the rest of the outfit so she can play with it like gloves on her doll). I took this photo on the Saturday night of the testimony.