Wilford Woodruff's Miraculous Escape from a Falling Oak Tree

“While on my way east I put my carriage into the yard of one of the brethren in Indiana, and Brother Orson Hyde set his wagon by the side of mine, and not more than two feet from it. Dominicus Carter, of Provo, and my wife and four children were with me. My wife, one child and I went to bed in the carriage, the rest sleeping in the house. I had been in bed but a short time when a voice said to me: “Get up, and move your carriage.” It was not thunder, lightning or an earthquake, but the still, small voice of the Spirit of God—the Holy Ghost. I told my wife I must get up and move my carriage. She asked: "What for?" I told her I did not know, only the Spirit told me to do it. I got up and moved my carriage several rods, and set it by the side of the house. As I was returning to bed the same Spirit said to me, ''Go and move your mules away from that oak tree,” which was about one hundred yards north of our carriage. I moved them to a young hickory grove and tied them up. I then went to bed. In thirty minutes a whirlwind caught the tree to which my mules had been fastened, broke it off near the ground, and carried it one hundred yards, sweeping away two fences in its course, and laid it prostrate through that yard where my carriage stood, and the top limbs hit my carriage as it was. In the morning I measured the trunk of the tree which fell where my carriage had stood, and I found it to be five feet in circumference. It came within a foot of Brother Hyde's wagon, but did not touch it. Thus, by obeying the revelation of the Spirit of God to me I saved my life and the lives of my wife and child, as well as my animals. In the morning I went on my way rejoicing.”

— Wilford Woodruff, Leaves from My Journal