‘Moonshine Saved The Pastor’ In Michigan

YALE, MI — A Michigan pastor pinned under a lawn tractor was saved by Moonshine, and the preacher's family says it just goes to show that God knows a good joke when He sees one. Moonshine isn't bootleg hooch, but a horse by that name.

The 15-year-old Appaloosa gelding was unusually stubborn when Amanda Thorson, 18, of Yale, tried to load him in a trailer to take him to a new barn Tuesday. It wasn't far away, so Thorson’s friend Miranda “MJ” Ross rode the horse bareback while Thorson and another friend followed in a pickup and trailer, the Port Huron Times-Herald reported. Without warning, Moonshine began spinning in circles, ignoring Ross’ cues at the reins and refusing to move forward, Thorson told the newspaper.

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Thorson cut the engine to the pickup. Its hum had masked it, but a barely audible voice was calling for help. It was as if Moonshine used his horse sense to will Thorson and Ross to rescue the elderly man — Pastor Leonard Barney, it turned out — who had become pinned under the lawn tractor while unloading it from his truck. The women lifted the tractor, freeing him.

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Melissa Barney said her father in law, who is recovering from several fractures and puncture wounds at a Detroit hospital, lay under the tractor for about 45 minutes, “just praying to God to send him someone.”

“It was just amazing how God worked the whole situation out,” Barney added, telling the Times-Herald the Barney family is getting mileage out of the punchline that “Moonshine saved the pastor.”

“What a sense of humor God has,” she said.

» For more on this story, go to the Port Huron Times-Herald.

Photo by eXtensionHorses via Flickr Commons