April 5 Petition Mission

“Be serious and watchful in your prayers” (1 Pet 4:7).

A remarkable incident is told in the life of Archibald Gracie IV. He was returning to the U.S. on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He attended church service that fateful Sunday in April 1912, and, at about 11:45 pm, he was jarred awake and realized the ship was listing. Putting on his life jacket, he escorted some women up to the Boat Deck and assisted them into a lifeboat. Then he helped fill the remaining lifeboats with women and children. As the forepart of the ship slid below the waves, the undertow pulled Gracie down into the ocean.

Meanwhile his wife in America was awakened from sleep, feeling her husband in grave danger. She labored in prayer until about 5 am, when peace returned. Only later she discovered that, as she prayed, her husband had amazingly been pulled to the surface near an overturned lifeboat. At 5, after hours drifting, he was plucked from the sea and arrived at the Carpathia in the last lifeboat rescued.