Melissa Engle's Answered Prayer for the Interlochen Grant

Melissa Engle of West Valley, Utah, was born with only a thumb on her right hand after the umbilical cord was wrapped around and severed her fingers in the womb. Her father wanted her to find a way to strengthen and use the hand, and the violin proved a natural fit, since it can be played without fingering with both hands. She studied for about eight years, taking private lessons she helped pay for with a paper route and riding a bus across town to reach them. She applied to Interlochen, the celebrated music camp on a lake in Michigan, and could hardly believe it when she was accepted. The obstacle was money: the eight weeks of intensive music training cost thousands of dollars, and there was no way she could earn that much before the deadline. So she prayed and prayed, and about a week before the money was due she was called into the office of a man who had a grant for a person with a handicap who was pursuing the arts. To her, it was a miracle. When the grant came through, she turned to her mother, who had quietly tried to curb her daughter's hopes so she would not be disappointed, and said, "Mother, I told you Heavenly Father answers prayers, for look how He has answered mine." President Thomas S. Monson recounted her experience in his October 1992 general conference address "Miracles, Then and Now," concluding that He who notes a sparrow's fall had fulfilled a child's dream and answered a child's prayer.