Blessed Beyond Coincidence-The Miracles of a Mother's Faith: Tiffaney Castañeda's Story - Latter-Day Lights

When life seems to unravel all at once, will you trust that God is still there?

In this deeply moving episode of Latter-Day Lights, Scott and Alisha sit down with lifelong Latter-Day Saint—Tiffaney Castañeda—as she shares her remarkable journey of faith through unimaginable trials and unmistakable miracles.

From her daughter’s near-fatal battle with autoimmune hepatitis, down to the sudden and unexpected passing of her youngest daughter, every step of Tiffaney’s story reveals the Lord’s hand at work in the details. Through moments of heartbreak, healing, and grief, Tiffaney’s experiences testify that miracles are not reserved for scripture—they unfold quietly in hospital rooms, on long drives, and in the smallest tender mercies that remind us we are never alone.

Through it all, Tiffaney testifies that God not only hears our prayers, but speaks to us in the quiet moments when we need Him most. Her story is one of courage, surrender, and the kind of faith that endures through both the good and bad—a reminder that even in our darkest hours, the Lord keeps His promises.

*** Please SHARE Tiffaney's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/HPa6f-m7aww

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To READ Scott's book, "Faith To Stay," visit: https://www.faithtostay.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 “Faith to Stay” by Scott Brandley
• 0:30 Intro
• 1:00 Welcoming Tiffaney Castañeda to the show
• 2:00 Tiffaney in a nutshell
• 5:20 Tiffaney’s daughter contracts auto-immune hepatitis
• 8:45 Tiffaney’s daughter recovers and gets pregnant
• 12:00 Tiffaney’s granddaughter looks for her biological mother
• 15:10 Tiffaney gets protective custody of her grandchildren
• 19:00 Tiffaney’s GoFundMe, donations, and prayers
• 22:50 Tiffaney’s daughter gains custody of her kids
• 23:50 Tiffaney’s daughter is back in the hospital
• 27:10 Tiffaney flies to Florida to take care of her daughter
• 28:00 Hurricane Helene comes
• 32:30 Tiffaney’s daughter was a approved for a liver
• 33:50 Tiffaney’s car malfunctions
• 37:25 Tiffaney’s daughter gets toxic poisoning
• 44:00 Why Tiffaney’s SUV went off
• 47:00 Tiffaney’s daughter finds a donor + gets surgery
• 52:40 Tiffaney’s daughter gets put into an ECMO system
• 58:20 Tiffaney’s daughter undergoes a rare surgical procedure
• 1:03:00 Tiffaney tries to take her daughter of her medications
• 1:06:00 Tiffaney sends out a call to fast
• 1:11:00 Tiffaney’s daughter recovers
• 1:14:00 Tiffaney goes home and her granddaughter joins the Church
• 1:18:00 Tiffaney’s youngest daughter dies
• 1:25:00 Tiffaney takes a walk after her daughter’s celebration of life
• 1:28:50 Tiffaney receives a blessing
• 1:33:45 Alisha's reflections
• 1:36:20 Why Tiffaney reached out to Latter-Day Lights
• 1:37:15 Tiffaney’s additional story
• 1:40:00 Scott and the importance of gratitude
• 1:45:00 Final thoughts
• 1:46:00 Outro

Transcript

Scott Brandley: 0:00

Hey there, as a Latter Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Stay. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So, if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faith2stay.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Alisha Coakley: 0:31

And I'm Alisha Copley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley: 0:40

On today's episode, we're going to hear how one woman's journey of trials and miracles has helped her to remember that the Lord not only hears us, but speaks to us along the way. Welcome to Latter Day Lights. So welcome to the show.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:16

Hi. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Alisha Coakley: 1:19

Yeah, we're so excited to have you. You were telling us a little earlier that you you've listened to a good handful of our shows. Is that right?

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:27

Yeah, you guys are my go-to during the day when I'm outside working. I'll just throw you guys on and listen to you.

Alisha Coakley: 1:34

Aww.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:36

Great stories. They're flipping.

Alisha Coakley: 1:38

We have some really amazing guests for sure. And we're really excited that you're here and that you're going to be sharing your story so you get to be among the Latter Day Lights family now. Um so, Tiffany, like we we do every show, we'd love to know just a little bit more about you. Do you want to kind of give us a little sneak peek into who you are?

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:58

Sure. Um so my name is Tiffany Castaneta and I have three kids. I have 11 grandchildren. I um live in California, um, in the middle of nowhere, as um I had kind of told you guys earlier. Um I closest place would be Yosemite National Park, would be the closest to where I'm at. Nice. And yeah, I love it. Um I did grow up in Salt Lake City. Um, I predominantly Sandy and West Valley. So I was in Utah most of my life, and um then I got married, had three kids, like I said, got divorced, and then I married the man that I've been with now for 25 years. So, and he's the California guy that dragged me out here. So I live in California. He didn't like the snow in Utah, so he's like, We're out of here. So yeah, so I've been a member my whole life. Um, I was inactive for a short period of time, but I about three years and then I came back, and I've been active ever since.

Alisha Coakley: 3:07

Nice. And what do you do for fun, for work, for hobbies?

Tiffaney Castañeda: 3:12

Um, well, I am a notary for the state of California, so I do do that on the side, and that's just kind of you know, my hours, my schedule, whatever I want, which is really nice. And then um I have a homestead, so I have animals. I live on a couple acres of land, and that keeps me very busy. Um my husband is a deputy for um a couple counties over, so he does that and we'll be retiring soon. So um, you know, that's about what keeps me busy. I I just kind of do a lot of service. Um, my branch is uh elderly ward or an elderly branch. So um I was the release society president until all of this happened, and then I asked to be released because I was in Florida and I couldn't do both, and so um they released me, and so I did a lot of service for the three years I was the release society president, and I loved it, and I I loved I still love the branch. Clearly, I'm still here. So I love the branch, and the women are amazing.

Alisha Coakley: 4:17

So yeah. Which part of Florida were you in?

Tiffaney Castañeda: 4:21

Um my daughter lives in a place called Light Oak. Um, but predominantly some of my story will be in Gainesville, Florida, where we were at for a while. So yeah.

Alisha Coakley: 4:33

Gotcha. I went to college in Gainesville for a little bit.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 4:35

So what what was it at the university?

Alisha Coakley: 4:38

Uh at Santa Fe. So okay. Yeah. Yep, nope, I was uh I couldn't get behind the gators. I am an old fan all the way.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 4:50

Maybe after this story you will have at least a sympathetic card how's that?

Alisha Coakley: 4:55

Oh I'm sure you know sympathy is there for sure, but like all the way.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 5:06

That's great.

Alisha Coakley: 5:07

Oh well, we're excited to to you know hear your story and just to get to know a little bit more about you and your family. And so um we're gonna turn the time over to you.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 5:19

Okay, well, um, to start with my story, I'm gonna have to go back a few years so that you'll understand when uh when we really get into it. Um, when my oldest daughter was about 10 years old, she was um having well, it started when she was five, she started breaking out in spots like uh pigmentation was missing. And um we didn't know what it was, the doctors didn't know what it was. They tried creams and stuff and they couldn't figure it out. And as long as she was healthy, we didn't really care, so we kind of moved on with that. When she was 10, she turned jaundice. I mean, almost yellow, gold yellow. Um she had come back from her dad's house because we were had gotten divorced by then, and she walked in the door and I said, Oh my gosh, what has happened to you? And immediately I ran her to the emergency room, and they couldn't figure it out, and they finally said it's either her kidneys or her liver. And through more testing at the U of U, we found out through um they did a what is it called? Like a scope and took a little bit of her liver, and they said, Well, if it's good, we know it's her kidneys, if it's bad, then we know it's her liver, and it was her liver. Um, she had she had an autoimmune um disease, which was autoimmune hepatitis. So her body was basically fighting off her liver. And um how we found out was they had contacted my ex-husband because he was the insurance carrier, and um then he left it on my message, my x-ray machine. You know, back then when we used to have those things, yeah. And basically told me that my daughter had a 10% chance of living and that she was extremely severe, and that we needed to come in to meet with the doctor to see if there was anything we could do as far as extending her life, whether it be a liver transplant or something like that. So um we did go, we ran more tests, they gave her huge doses of um medication, which was of steroids, it was horrible on her body. Um, but um it's and through, yes, I would say, of course, medication. The Lord uses medication, but um of course I had for a blessing to be given to her. And when we went in for the testing to be, you know, to see how the medication had done, because the doctor actually told me, I don't think this is gonna do anything. It hurt her liver is so bad that you know, we are probably looking at some type of um transplant at her age, and I was like, Oh my gosh. But when we went in, we ended up in the waiting room for like three hours, and I finally was like, What is going on? And she's like, Okay, we'll take you to the room. The nurse doctor came in and said, I don't understand this, I don't believe this, but your numbers have literally gone um to half. And and I said, Really? And she's like, I've never seen medication work like that before. And I just kind of smiled because I was like, I don't really think it was a medication, I believe truly it was the blessing. And so that kind of starts the segue of of where we're going. And um, she was told not to have children. Um, like I said, you know, she wasn't supposed to live. I mean, she had a 10% chance of living. Um, when she was 16, she was told not to have children. She I was told she probably wouldn't leave live past 21. Um, when she was 19, she got pregnant um with my granddaughter, who is now 17. Wow. And um yeah, and and then shortly after um she had another one. Um both pregnancies were incredibly, incredibly hard on her. Um the first one, um, the doctor was in there for 45 minutes because there was so much blood. So part of this autoimmune that you have when you're with the liver, she her blood wouldn't clot. And so her platelets were really low. And so she was bleeding tremendously through the birth. Um and so it looked like a murder scene in there because I was in there as her coach, and uh my daughter was white as a ghost, and luckily, you know, the only thing my daughter asked me, she's like, Mom, is my baby okay? And of course, I went over there, 10 fingers, 10 toes, everything looks good. Um, and I just stood with her until they had to give her platelet and blood transfusions, and then her color started coming back, and and things went well. So that kind of is where we started when she was real young. And then um uh sh the father of this child of these two children ended up um I guess you could call it basically parentally kidnapping them after um I would say um she tried to get out of the relationship and she did, and did she got married to another man, and in the process, the he took the children away and we couldn't get a hold of them. So there's a reason I'm saying all this because it's it's all come back and it all makes sense in the in the rest of the episode. But um, so yeah, that was devastating for 10 years listening to my daughter just ball every single birthday, Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day for no reason, you know, just missing them. That was really hard.

Alisha Coakley: 11:07

And of course, as the grandmother had no idea where they were at all.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 11:11

No, we did, we did, and they were in Utah, and um but because when she would try to go down there, because she was living in Kentucky at the time, when she would try to go down and get them, he would have them gone. And because they were not married, there's no legal, there's no legal custody, and so it's like whoever has them has the custody. So if they found out my daughter was in in town, they would disappear for days on end. So they would take the kids so that we couldn't get a hold of them. When we would send them cards, they'd rail them back. We'd send them, mail them gifts, they'd send them back. When we try to call it to roll them helper, we'd send child support or child protective services over, and nothing would happen. That's another story. But yeah, it was awful. So for 10 years we kind of went through that and it was awful. And then when she was 21, I think, um, she was diagnosed with stage four cirrhosis, and that's just based off you know, the autoimmune and of course the medication and everything combined. Um, it was it was eminent. Like we knew she would eventually get this because of the disease. Um fast forward um last year. Um we were I guess a little bit before like the October of 2023. Um, my daughter's daughter, my granddaughter, her name's legend, she um was trying to look for her mom, and she finally found out that my daughter was actually her mother. It's a long story, but they were told that their stepmom was their biological mom, and then she found out the truth. So then when she tell you, that's a whole new episode about what went on with them. I'm trying to like, okay, how do I shorten this but make sense? Um that's crazy. It really, it really is. Um, and we're still getting more stories that we're just you know, it's just incredible. But so she started looking for my daughter, contacted her. We were in contact with her for a short period of time, and it was an answer to prayers. I mean, 10 years we have been praying for to find a way to get a hold of my dog, granddaughter. How can we do this? Everything costs money, but with my daughter so very sick with stage four cirrhosis, she can't really work for very long or at all. The doctors never wanted her to work, so you need money for a lawyer, you need, you know, and it just kind of like was a never-ending problem. And so we had kind of come to terms with we might have to wait until they're 18 because nobody had the finances to fight this, and it was really it was very complicated. Every lawyer she called, they would say we wouldn't take the case because there was so much to it, and it was so complicated. Um and so that made it very hard. So when she contacted us and started talking to us behind her dad and stepmom's back, we weren't sure how that was gonna go because they get caught, she's gonna not only be in trouble, but they don't want her to have any contact with us at all.

Alisha Coakley: 14:28

Right.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 14:29

So after a few months, she called it off. Um, she told them that she'd been talking to us, and they told her a bunch of lies, and she believed them, which we understand that's been their parents. You're gonna want to believe your mom and dad are telling you the truth. So she cut off all ties again, and that was in February of 2024. So um, after listening to my daughter just cry and cry and cry, because you know, it was finally like she finally thought that God had answered her prayers, which I still believe he did. Um but it was really hard to cut off that communication again. Um, come up to May of 2024. Um I had broken my leg and I was getting ready for go for surgery, and this happened the day before my surgery. That's why I know it's in May. So I had uh broken my leg at the end of my driveway, and I had it broke the bone in half, so they had to screw it together. And so the day of my surgery, I get a call from my um children's stepmom and she's like, Will you look at this text? And I did, and we didn't know if it was real or not, because it kept saying that they were friends of my grandson in his name, and I kept saying, No, I don't know if that's true. Let's just keep on. We thought it might be the stepmom trying to trip us up and get the kids in trouble again. So we were playing very carefully, and then we found out it was actually a real friend reaching out from my grandson's buddy. We got a hold of him, found out he he got a hold of me. I got up somehow, I think that's what happened. We got a hold of each other, we started talking real briefly, and his dad found out right then and there while we were talking. And his dad blew up, broke his iPad, pulled him off the bed, hit him in the head. He stood all the way up the stairs and was yelling and screaming at him. Um, he was very, very abusive. He was very abusive. Got my granddaughter out, was saying things like, if you don't want to be here, you can leave, that type of stuff. My grandson told us some things later on. He called and told us he took off running, he's at a friend's house. And I said, he says, What do you want me to do, Mimi? Because that's what they call me as Mimi. And I said, I want you to go back to school tomorrow, and I want you to tell the counselor, and I want you to tell everybody what's happening at home, and I don't want you to stop, but I want you to tell everybody until they start listening to you. And it's a series of events that would is very long, but between the kids running away, then contacting us, my daughter already in motion. We had a friend who worked for the juvenile um court system in Utah got a hold of her. So between these three moving parts, within 48 hours, we had protective custody of my grandchildren. And we had them taken out of the house. I know it was it to me that's a miracle because it that everything came together so beautifully. Like we had been trying since my granddaughter contacted us, and we were trying to um figure out how to get them out of the house without getting, you know, because sometimes CPS won't do it, so they leave them there, and then they get in more trouble, which is what had happened, and it just made life at home much worse because you know they wouldn't take them out of the home. So we were we had to make sure that that's what happened, and it did, and it worked perfectly. Like every single piece we needed was in place, and I just told my daughter, I said, There is no other question that the Lord has had his hand in this because every time we're like, Oh, you need this, boom, it'd be there. Oh, this needs to happen, boom, it would happen. It was just like seamlessly putting itself together. My youngest daughter and their stepmom went and picked up those kids and took them to their stepmom's house, and they stayed there till my daughter from Florida with her son could fly out there. Now, in the process of all this, it costs money. Nobody has the money to just get up, go, throw away all this thousands of dollars. And we had huge people. My we somebody put out a GoFundMe for them, and we had many people donate, which was a huge, huge, huge blessing. It covered everything because when they took my grandchildren out of that house, it they literally walked away with nothing, like a little handbag. The officers didn't even tell them what they were taking, um, where they were going, how long they would be gone. The grandkids had no idea. So one at least had the thought to pack some underwear, but as far as clothes and things like that, we had to basically start from scratch. Right. And so those donations were absolutely blessings, huge blessings. And we had people like a friend of mine, she she called me up, and she's a single mama five, and she had been out for surgery, you know. So, and and she is a member of the church. She called me up and she's like, Tiffany, I I saw your Facebook page, and I'm just I I have to do this. I know you're gonna tell me no. And she's I'm like, What are you talking about? And she's told me, she's like, tell me when she needs to be in Utah. I'm going to buy her airline ticket for her and her son. And so I'm like, She couldn't afford this. I know she couldn't afford this, but she said, Don't take these blessings away from me. Wow. And how do you how do you how do you like reason with that? Because you know where she's standing, but you understand what she's saying, and she feels so prompted to do so. And so she did it, and so it was just remarkable. Um she needed a lawyer. We found out 48 hours before she had to show up in court, the uh Guardia Lightham told her she needed a she needed a lawyer, and my daughter called me crying, and she's like, Mom, how are you gonna do this? I don't I don't have five thousand dollars. How are we gonna come up with this? And after everything, I just said pray. Just pray. I said, You can't sit here and think that this is all coincidental. This is Heavenly Father is finally creating this miracle for us. We have been praying for over 10 years for your kids, and it's here, and everything is in place. I said, if you're meant to get this lawyer and you're meant to have these kids, the Lord will find a way. And she just said, Okay, so literally in my kitchen, I got on my knees and I prayed with my daughter on the phone, and and it was a very simple prayer, and it was just you know, help us find the money so that this can be possible. And she did five thousand dollars in 24 hours. She she had it. Wow, it was incredible. My daughter called me back up and she's like, I can't even believe this is happening. Like, if somebody told me this, you'd almost think that they're lying. Because it was just so boom, boom, boom, boom, every and you know, blessing, miracle. I mean, I there's a fine line between the two, you know, but they say blessings are, you know, things that even we can bless each other, right? And the miracles are things that only the Lord can do. So these are truly miss, these are truly miracles because there is nothing we ourselves could have made this happen, but um, because the Lord guided people into our lives, brought people that we needed into our lives, everything just went amazing. And um, the lawyer and she ended up getting the kids, and um, they're in Florida now, and he actually gave up his rights because he didn't want the state getting involved with any of his finances or looking into his past or his his present too. Um he uh he's a drug dealer for in Utah. So yeah, he did not want anybody finding out anything. So so he so anyway, so now we have the kids, and that in itself for us was a huge miracle. And uh so she finally gets to take him to Florida and has had been given permission and everything's legal to do so, and she gets to Florida, and um three weeks later she ends up in the hospital. And by now, uh I am just starting to walk. I haven't been walking for four months, and so I am just starting to walk, and uh, I'm out of a boot and uh off of crutches, and um she calls me and she says, Mom, I need you. And I'm like, uh what do you mean? And she's like, it's my gallbladder, it's gone back. I don't have and I don't, I can't get out of the hospital. Lester, her fiance, has to go back, has to be go back to work, and she can't, you know, they can't leave the kids at home at the hospital, but or while she's in the hospital, they can't leave the kids alone. So I was like, I don't, I don't have the money. I just paid my huge doctor bill for my surgery. They just got home from all of this. The money's gone, they didn't have any money, and I said, Okay, I said, let's pray. I said, if I'm supposed to come help you, we'll figure out how to get this, how I'm gonna get out there. And um, she said, Okay. And so we hung up and I said a little prayer, and I said, So far you've been you're batting it 100 right now, Father in heaven. I mean, I'm clearly I'm being a little facetious, but I mean, I I was more sincere than this. But I did pray to him and I just said, Look, if I'm supposed to be in Florida, help my daughter, please help me find the money to get there because you know what my bank account looks like, and you know what her bank account looks like. So I'm not sure how this is gonna happen, but we need close to $600 to get me out there in 24 hours. And I kind of went about that. Was in the morning, I kind of went about my day. Um, I went out to get the mail. And as I was walking back to the house, I opened up an envelope from the hospital. I assumed it was either a another bill or thank you for paying us, you know, the two that you usually get after something like that. And uh I got a letter stating that I had overpaid the hospital $600 and that they would be putting that back into my health insurance account and that it should be there by such and such a day, which was the day I received the letter. Um I stared at it was like, no way. No way. So I um I came running back home and I mean back into the house, I grabbed my phone, I looked up, sure enough, there was six hundred dollars. My ticket was $580, and it cost me $20 to get my luggage onto the plane. So exactly $600 is what I needed.

Speaker 5: 27:02

Wow.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 27:04

$600 is what the Lord gave us. So I flew to Florida and I was supposed to be there for about three weeks. That turned into six months because um uh in that in that time frame with the gallbladder going bad for most of us, for you and for me, if our gallbladder went bad, they would just basically take it out and we would just go on living. But you need a liver to supplement what the gallbladder does. And since my daughter's liver was not working properly, or if at all, at this point, that I think um she couldn't, they wouldn't um take it out. And it was causing her a lot of pain, and so they decided that they she needed a liver transplant immediately. So here I am in Florida with my two grandkids I've just re- been reunited with. And I hadn't seen them since they were three and four years old, and so at that time um they were 14 and 15 years old, and um and they they just you know, trying to figure it out, getting into school, trying to find new friends, you know, in a new state, new everything was brand new for them, and bless their hearts, they they've done amazing, remarkable, they've just done amazing. So I just we went through the process of tests and stuff, and I prayed the whole time because if you fail in any of those tests, you are not eligible for a liver. And if my daughter didn't get a liver, her life expectancy was less than three years. And so I was just, you know, praying that she would get through all those tests, which she did, and she did well. Um, they were a little worried about her heart, but they assumed that it was just because of the liver. And after running the test, it came out that that was the purpose, that the liver was affecting her heart, and that they assumed that once the liver um they got a new liver that she would be okay. So in that, we uh had to you have to wait for approval for the insurance, and that wasn't a big deal, it was just a matter of time, you know, because you know, insurance never speeds anything up, and so it was just a matter of waiting for them to you know get going. But I'm gonna say Florida is pretty quick, at least compared to California. Everything takes forever here, but Florida they did it in about through two or three weeks, and um, in that means. Time we had Hurricane Helene come through, which I'm sure you guys all saw. That was an experience. If you told me I was gonna go through a hurricane, I would have told you you're crazy. I live in California. That's never gonna happen. But um my daughter kept telling me, Don't worry, mom. It we go through them all the time, you know. Two, three, four just kept growing. I kept looking at her. And by then there was nowhere to go, you couldn't leave. The storm was over 400 miles long, you know, covering everything. And it was supposed to hit right above right on us. We were supposed to get it. And my court husband here in California and my little branch that I live in were praying their little hearts out for me. And um my husband was honestly, he was more scared than I was. He kept saying, Aren't you afraid? And I said, No. I said, I didn't come to Florida to have something bad happen to me. I came to Florida to take care of our daughter and our grandkids, and I know Father in Heaven will protect us. And I just kept telling him that. I kept telling my daughter, my grandkids. And sure enough, as soon as that storm hit the coast, it shifted just enough to miss our little tiny little place. Not that it didn't have destruction, trust me. I was floored at how much destruction that did. And it sounded like a freight train was running right next to our building. Our little uh, we were in a well, they call it the man cave, but it's made out of all brick, and it's where they had like a game room and a cot and a pool table and stuff. But you go, you stand there and you just listen, it sounds like there's a freight train just running right next to the building that was just incredible. Um, but we were safe. Nothing, nothing happened to us, and we were perfectly safe. Um I can't say much for the neighborhood, but like you know, the gas station right down the street looked like somebody had used a can opener to open up. The top of it just was all curled up, and um vinyl was wrapped around poles, poles were hanging, they were all over the ground, there was no electricity, clearly, no phone, no nothing for quite a while. So for me, that's just pure blessings and protection by the Lord. And then um, two days after we got service, we found out that she'd been approved, that now we just needed to get her tested. Um, because it had been several weeks, so they wanted a blood test, and then we could get her on the list and we were good to go. I was so excited. We had decided, oh, I forgot that one part. Um uh we had decided that um because she lived about an hour and 45 minutes away from the hospital, that it would be better to rent a home closer to Gainesville. So that because once you have a liver transplant, you have to go to the hospital like every week. The first time it's like every couple days, and then it's every week, and then after a while it's every two weeks, and they kind of until everything starts balancing out with the drugs and everything for that. So we had we went out and we did that, and um, we went to the hospital, we took the grandkids to school, and um, oh wait, no, they weren't in school yet. Sorry, no school yet. They were just home. We went to go get the blood testing done, and um I kept telling my daughter, I said, Man, your car is driving so loud. And uh, she's like, What do you mean? I said, It's just the tires are so loud, and she's like, Mom, it's just probably because the kids aren't here talking your ear off. So I was like, I don't think so, but okay. So we drove to the hospital, got all that done, was coming back, and I'm going about 80 miles an hour down the freeway, and all of a sudden I hear boom. And I was like, my heart sunk because if anybody knows, when you hit a flat tire on the freeway going that fast, you can flip your car, you can have it wrap around. There's a lot of things that can happen. So I hurried and pulled over to the side. Um, I grew up as a mechanic's daughter, so I know a lot about cars. So I was prepared to change a tire. Yes, I know how to do that. I was prepared to do what I needed to. So when I walked around and I looked at the tire, there was air in it. The tire looked fine. And I I kicked it just to make sure, yeah, there's still air in it. And I'm like, what the heck? So I thought, okay, maybe it's a belt. So I had my daughter pop the hood and I'm looking under the hood, and everything looks fine. And I'm I'm just staring at this car, going, what the heck? So I get, I get, we kind of hop off the freeway because you couldn't go more than 30 miles an hour without hearing that noise. And my daughter kept going, What is it? What is it? I'm like, I have no clue. There's air in the tire, so I don't know what's going on. Hobbled off, found another spot, looked at it again, still looked fine, don't know what's going on, found a tire place. They told us the tread, the tread had come off part of the tire, but the tire was still intact. Okay. I was like, okay, how's that even possible? I mean, you know, usually when the tread comes off, the rest of it rips off too. But I'm like, okay, so but they didn't have any tires, so we went to another tire place just down the street. We didn't, and they happened to have two tires that we needed and could get us in at that very moment. So we drove two minutes down the street and found him and got in. The guy comes out and he asks, he goes, Who's the one who owns the Ford? And we raised our hands. He goes, Could you come with me, please? And I'm like, Okay. So we go back there and he look, we look down at it, and he looks at me and he goes, Where did you say you drove this car? I said, On the freeway, going 80 miles an hour. And he said, You sh there's no way. And he showed us the tire, and all you could see was cord, like the wiring on the tire. That's it. He said, There's no way you should have been able to drive off the freeway like this. I don't even know how you got here. And I just smiled at my daughter, and I said, Okay, thank you. And I just and my daughter's inactive, so I kept every time something like this happened, I just kept going, hmm, you know, the Lord is watching over you. Can you get it together, please? So we got home, we went and had dinner, celebrated. We were so excited. She's got on the transplant list, it's official. We get home, and my daughter, we're going to bed after dinner, and she can't find her keys. And she's asking me, she says, Dump out your purse. I think you grabbed the SUV key. Can't find her keys. I said, It's late, go to bed. We'll talk about it later. Just go to bed. She's like, Okay, mom. I didn't know where the key was. Um, she went to bed. I went to bed next morning because it was so late. I usually get her up, I'm her caretaker, so I would get her medication, get the kids breakfast, started, do all that. But it was so late, I thought, an hour's not going to make a difference. Let's let them sleep in. Well, the SUV started going off the alarm, like somebody had bumped into it, and I was staying in their camper trailer, which was right next to it. So I kind of jumped up and ran over to see what was going on. Maybe the dog hit it or some animal because she lives in the country in Florida. Nothing. My granddaughter comes running around the corner, and I'm like, Did you do this? And she's like, No, I thought there was an intruder. Don't come out for an intruder again. Just go back in the house. So I got my shoes, went in, I went to go find my daughter. My daughter was dressed, but she was dressed very oddly. She had very odd clothes, summer winter clothes on, and it was still very hot and humid, like 90 degrees. I walked over and I started talking to her, and she kept repeating the same thing over and over again. I'm okay, I'm just sitting here. I'm okay, I'm just sitting here, no matter what I said. I walked over, pushed her hoodie off, pushed her hair back, nobody was home. She was not there in her eyes. So I didn't know what was wrong at the moment, but I heard a voice say, She has toxic poisoning, you need to get her to the hospital immediately. So me and my granddaughter grabbed her, put her in the car, we got her to the hospital. I looked up toxic poisoning because I didn't know what that was, and I found out that it is something you get with cirrhosis because your liver can't clear, when your body can't clean out the toxins, they eventually build up in your system. Well, the medication that she was supposed to have been taking that she had gotten just before the hurricane hit four days prior, five days prior to this, she hadn't been taking for three weeks. So I wasn't aware of that. I didn't know that that's what it did. And part of the problem was they kept sending it to the wrong pharmacy, so then they'd say, No, we have to wait and get it again. So she eventually forgot she was supposed to go get it. In that if you reach 200 in your toxic count, you look at brain damage, death, um, you're looking at a coma, being put in a coma, medical coma, I think it is. Um, and you're also looking at um seizures. Um, there's a lot of factors, and people actually do die from toxic quasine if not treated quickly. Well, that just set my heart rate up like esponentially. And I am racing down the street. I'm watching my daughter go coherent. She's having seizures, they're tremor seizures in the car. She doesn't know who I am, she doesn't know who her daughter is. She can't repeat, she just keeps repeating those same two lines over and over again. And we get to the hospital and she has a full-blown seizure in front of the nurse. We get her in there, and I find out through um the nurse, I asked her after the test came back. The doctor wouldn't tell me what um the numbers were, but her I knew she was concerned because when you go in and they think, yada, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and then all of a sudden they're serious, you can hear the doctor's voice change. So I asked the nurse what the numbers were. She was 198. That was her toxic numbers. So I am sitting there crying, holding my daughter's hand, waiting for them to get the medicine, and I'm praying, and I'm like, please, Lord, please don't let her die. She just got her kids back. She has so much to live for, please don't let her go. And as clear as I am talking to you, I heard a voice saying, Tiffany, where is your faith? And I sat up and I looked around the room and I just said it back in my head. I said, It's here, Lord. It's here, but this is so scary. And I don't want anything to happen to my daughter. And he said, I did not create these miracles to bring her home. It is not her time. And I sat up and I was like, Okay, okay, I believe you. And so when the nurse came in, she's like standing there, and I'm like, What are we waiting for? And she's like, Well, I need another nurse to help me. I can't move her myself and put the medicine in because they had to do it rectally. And my daughter is about my size, like height, and she's a lot skinnier than I am, but she's about we're about the same height. I turned around, jumped up, put the bar down, grabbed my daughter, flipped her over, put her in the position she was supposed to, and I'm like, let's go, let's make this happen. The nurse was shocked, and she stared at me. I'm like, what are you waiting for? Get out of her body, get it in her body. So make another long story short at the ER, I was not their favorite person by the time I left, I promise, but I am my daughter's advocate, and so I was there to make sure my daughter got taken care of, and she did. And um uh she woke up the next morning in the hospital. I had and her fiance drove 14 hours to be there, and he was there when she woke up, and she had no idea. The last thing she remembered, she says, was coming into my trailer and asking me for to look for the keys. Now, um, how the how the SUV, if I if you remember, I said the SUV went off and my granddaughter and I were talking. Well, it shut itself off by itself, you know, like somebody hit the button and it turned itself off. I didn't think anything about that at the time because that's what made me go in and talk to my daughter, is I figured she found the keys, and I was gonna go in and tell her, you know, where were they? Um, but when the next that day, the following day, when we were at the house and she was in the hospital, I had the kids cleaning up the debris from Helene, all the trees had blown down and stuff, and so we were cleaning that up. And me packing for only three weeks and have already been there three months. I I have very limited clothes, so I have to keep washing often. And I thought, well, this is a good opportunity. So I went to grab all my clothes out of the cabinet in the in the trailer, and when I pulled down my pants, out fell the key to the SUV. It was full in my pants in the cabinet. And I my granddaughter and my grandson did not grow up with religion, they don't know anything about the Bible, they don't know anything really more than Jesus Christ, who is tattooed on their dad's body. That's about all they know about him. Um, with the exception of a few LDS friends that they made in Utah. Um, I called my granddaughter because she'd been asking a lot of questions, and I handed her the keys, and she goes, Where did you find those? And so I told her. And she just looked down at the keys and she looked up at me and she goes, Mimi, does this mean what I think it means? I go, what do you think it means? And she goes, God save my mother. Now, if I had not been there, like if I wasn't able to have come out and my daughter had had a toxic um poisoning incident like this, it's very much like a drunk. Or in this case, the kids would have just thought my daughter was really sick and they would have put her to bed, and that would have killed her because they just would have put her to sleep and she would have died in her bed, and so um, so there was another reason why I know I was supposed to be there to make sure that my daughter lived. So if you can hear the story, you can start seeing all these little miracles, these little unbelievable events that the Lord has provided in one short period of time at this moment. And uh about um, I would say 30 days later, I was praying. I asked the Lord, I said, I've now been gone um four months almost, three and a half, four months, somewhere around there. That's a long time. My poor husband. Um with a with a with a house full of animals, because we have pigs and we have chickens and we have turkeys and we have dogs. And he's an he's a deputy and he's trying to keep all of this together. He was really, really, really missing me at this point. And um, so I always started praying. I said, Look, Father in heaven, I I I'm not ungrateful for your blessings, I'm not ungrateful for your miracles, and I am so grateful. I said, But after Whitney has this transplant, I'm gonna be here another two to three months to take care of her, and I need this to happen now. I said, please, please let them find a donor for her within the next week. Yeah, I gave the Lord an ultimate in a sense, and I'm like, please, please, if you do it by this time, I can be home by you know January. And so I kind of thought, wow, that sounds kind of selfish, Tiffany. Like, look at everything that's happened, and now you're asking for this too. So I didn't tell my daughter, I didn't actually tell anybody that I prayed about that because I thought it count, did sound kind of selfish, and probably was because I did miss my home and my husband. But five days after that prayer, we got a call for a donor. And my daughter is a she's she's a B negative, so it's not like any organ will fit like an O, you know, like O kind of goes with everybody. But and and they could use the O personn with the O type blood for that, but the organ isn't guaranteed not to be rejected because it's not an exact match. And you also have that thing where they're when you're donate with donating organs, if somebody donates an organ but they've you know, um, and it's from like a car accident or something like that, you have the option to use it, but without a history, so you don't know if they've done drugs or if they've had this or that, and they kind of go off a whim. So I was being very specific in my prayers for a specific donor with B minus, B negative, um, blood type. I mean, it had to be a very specific organ. And to get it in five days, it just we were my daughter was terrified and excited all at the same time because you're basically filleted like a fish to go in and have that removed and then have one put back in. And that's a serious, serious surgery. And I was ecstatic, I was so excited for multiple reasons. And my daughter, I said, 'Are you excited?' and she goes, I'm scared. And she goes, 'What if I die, mom?' and I hugged her and I said, Sweetheart, if you don't get it, you will definitely die. So you need, we need this. And I said, You're gonna make it, and she said, Okay. So we went in within 48 hours. She was in the hospital and she was getting her surgery, and she was shaking the entire way, and honestly, I was nervous too, because they say the sicker you are, the harder it is. So she had the surgery, and the doctor kept telling me what a beautiful liver it was. It's such a beautiful liver. I was like, I will take your word on it because I don't know what a beautiful liver looks like. But he also told me that my daughter was much sicker than they had thought, and so um, that kind of worried me a little bit. But the surgery was a success, and when they cut you open, it's kind of like an L shape, and they have to cut, you know, write down your muscles. So when they sew you up, they don't sew your muscles up, they just sew the skin up for the first 48 hours. So in case there was an emergency, they can go back in without having to damage more of your muscle, abdominal muscles. So she seemed to be, she looked like she was nine months pregnant, but I assume that's just normal swelling. Never had that surgery. So she even got up and walked. She was doing really good, she was in a lot of pain, but she was she's like her mom. She's very stubborn and bull-headed, and she insisted on getting up and walking, no matter how bad it hurts, to prove that she was gonna be okay. And so um they 24 hours went by, the doctors were pleased. Um, they saw a little bit of problem with her heart, but they just assumed that that would fix itself. They sewed her muscles back up, they sewed her back up, and within less than 12 hours, she started falling, spiraling down. Um, her heart went into congestive heart failure, her liver went into congestive, was congested as well, and it was because the heart was not used to that much blood being pumped into her, um, you know, being pumped in from the liver. So it filled and stopped working. And then the other side was working overtime to make up for the other side, and they were worried she was gonna have a heart attack. So they had to go back in and pull out the blood and try to make this work. And she we tried waking her up, like you know, pulling her out after that surgery, the emergency surgery, but she started panicking. She was almost like a hallucinogen type of thing. Like she was telling me to call my sister because they're trying to kill her, and and she looked like skin, a skeleton with skin on it. She was just, they had sucked the all the fluid out of her body. And for like 12 hours, she was just she wouldn't rush, she wouldn't do anything, so they put her back under. And when if you've ever been on a ventilator, it's a tube, and if you wake up and you're on this ventilator, it feels like you're suffocating because all you have is this small tube breathing for you, and so every time we try to wake her up, she would start, she would try to fight it because she felt like she was suffocating. Um, but she never got better after that. Um, the heart wasn't working right, um, liver wasn't working right because of the heart not working right. Um, everything went down, numbers went crazy. Um, and they decided that they were gonna put her what was called an ECMO system, and what that does is it's it works for your body. So there are people with liver and heart, there are people with uh that use this before they get a transplant. Um, like if you're waiting for a lung transplant, they'll usually put this on, and the ECMO system will work for it, the lungs, so that they can live longer, but they have to live in the hospital with this. And they also put like organs that are coming from a donor before it goes into a body, they'll put it on the machine to make sure it's working properly. So the ECMO system pushes oxygen and blood through this organ for you, and so they decided they needed to do that for my daughter's heart. So they set her up with an ECMO system and it goes up through her groin area into the arteries, and it starts doing the work for her. Well, it didn't exactly work properly, um, it helped with the right side. Let's see. It helped with the left side, but not the right side. And so watching her numbers go down, watching her not doing well, watching everything just fluctuate, they would try something, it wouldn't work, numbers would drop. Um, they had her highly sedated. Um the doctor pulled me over and and said, Tiffany, I need to talk to you. And he sat me down and he said, I'm not gonna lie to you. Your daughter is the, and this is in Gainesville University. Um, he says, I'm not gonna lie to you. He says, Your daughter is the sickest person in this hospital. And I'm just sitting in the waiting room by myself. I've been doing most of this by myself until our fiance came. And uh I said, okay, what does that mean? And he said, if we don't, he goes, I want to try a procedure that has only been done five times in the world, and it has never been done here, and to be honest, I've never done it either. And tears are now streaming down my face, and he said, But if we don't do this, your daughter is going to die. And um, and uh he said, I'm not gonna lie to you, this is extremely dangerous, and there's a good chance she could die during the procedure. And even if we get through the procedure, there is a chance she could die afterwards because we don't know how her body will react. And I said, Well, what am I supposed to say? He says, Can we do it? And I said, I don't think we have a choice. And he told me I had 50-50 chance, but I didn't believe him. You don't tell somebody that with a 50-50 chance, and I was just bawling, hysterically bawling. And he said, he said, so can I get your consent? And I said, Yes. So he left, and what it is is they're going to put a second ECMO system in her body. So the other one was gonna go through her neck, and there's a cord that goes down through the artery and through the heart and up and around and out. What it the way I've described it to people is if you've ever gone to a gym and you need a spotter to help you if you want to increase your weights on your muscles, you can't do it all by yourself because you won't be able to get it up, but you need a spotter just enough to help you get it up and then help you down. And eventually you'll be able to do that yourself, which you've had a spotter a few times, because you just need that little extra help, and your muscles need to have that kind of memorization. Well, this is what her heart needed, it needed that little extra help, and this is supposed to help pump that blood that kept storing up in her heart and pushing it through into her into the other um artery on the other side, and um I laid in the waiting room. I found the furthest chair in the waiting room in a corner, and I curled up in a bottle on the chair, and I just cried. And I told Father in heaven, I said, I know what you told me. And I believe you. That's all I have to hold on to. Is your promise. This is so scary. And I am all alone. And I don't have anyone here with me. And then I got this really warm feeling. And I heard, you're not alone, I'm here with you. And I said, I know you are. And I'm grateful, but I wish my husband was here right now. You know, I mean, I'm not trying to downplay that. It was such a help to hear the Lord truly being there every time I needed him. But uh the procedure went well. She looked, she had there wasn't a place on her body that wasn't covered in something. She had wires, she had all kinds of everything. The only spot she had was right here that I could kiss her forehead. She was covered in everything, and um I walked in. And it's hard, even, and this is where I talk about faith and fear in learning to trust Father in heaven when he tells you something. How many blessings have we ever had where the Lord tells us something and we get done with the blessing? And we're still questioning it. Will it really happen? Will it still happen? Yeah, you know, and I'm I'm just as guilty. But I had to just, and let me tell you, Lucifer, Satan, he'll take you down that rabbit hole. You know, especially when you hear something like that, and you're sitting alone and you're fighting off those thoughts in your head, hearing that she's gonna die, you're gonna lose your daughter, everything's in vain. I mean, just these thoughts were going through my head, and I kept saying, No, Father in heaven promised. He promised, he promised. That's all I kept saying. He promised. He promised God does not break his promises. And so we decided uh she needed to have one of the ECMOs taken out of her body, and I kept asking them and like we need to wake her up because her her numbers were so unstable. And uh I heard a voice tell me, because I have no nurse and I'm no doctor, I'm just an advocate and a crazy woman for my daughter, according to the nurses. So um, but I kept getting the I kept getting a voice that would just repeat itself, you need to get her off the medication. She'll do better off the medication. You need to take her off the medication. And so I I I asked one of the nurses, I said, There's got to be a way to get her off these medications without her panicking and reaching and ripping. Like one time they woke her up and she ripped the IV. They put a what is it called? Uh uh, not a block, but it's an IV that goes in where they can hook it in and take blood anytime without having to prick you a hundred times. So she had it in her neck, and one of the times she woke up, she just ripped it right out, and blood was everywhere. So that was she's she's not a violent person, but when you're under something, but um she just kept she kept being she's feisty, she's definitely a feisty child. Um, but uh I said there's gotta be something to rip this up. I mean, you know, fix this. So she's not doing this. We've gotta wake her up. And she's like, Well, I'm surprised they haven't said anything about having a tracheotomy. And I'm like, What? You can do that? She's like, Well, yeah, it's a lot easier if you just do the tracheotomy, then they don't have to hook it through your mouth, it goes right on here. And she can breathe like she's normally breathing, but this does it for her, but she can't tell because there's nothing blocking her airway. And I looked at him, I said, Why haven't we done this? Like, what the heck? We could have done this days ago, and she's like, Nobody's offered this. I said, No. So the next day when the doctor came in, that was the first thing out of my mouth. It's like, can we give her a tracheotomy? And he's like, Oh, yeah, we can do that, but we have to get her stable. And he goes, But we have to get her stable to take the uh ecmo out, her first ECMO out of her groin area. They needed to take that out because if your body relies too much on a machine, then it eventually stops working altogether. So, and yeah, by the way, with all this sucking and putting back and forth in her body and creating all this strain, she's also on dialysis. I forgot to add that. So she's got dialysis going on too. So she's got these three machines sucking and pushing and pulling. So I wrote on Facebook and I sent a message out to everybody I could think of, and I asked them to fast for my daughter because they wanted to run three a couple of tests before they went in for surgery to try and take the ECMO, first ECMO system out. And if it were successful, they could do the tracheotomy. So they ran two tests and they failed because when they start doing it, her numbers would plummet, and um, they didn't want her heart to stop beating. So when I did that, I sent out, I call it the SOS of fasting and prayer. And I said, if you are LDS and you're my LDS friends, please fast with me or my daughter. We need these tests to be approved so that we can so that we can move forward for my daughter's health. I said, um, put her name in the print temple roles in her whatever you can do. If you're not LDS, please pray for my daughter. Put her in your circle prayers at your churches, because I need all the help I can get to make this happen. Because they're supposed to do it tomorrow, and this was a Saturday. So I sent that out, and my whole family was fasting, and we went to church that morning because my the my husband, my son-in-law, my son-in-law, even though they're not legally married, they've been married together for nine years. Um, he was up at the hospital because we would trade places, and um I always went to church out there, and I took my grandkids, and uh I know um sacrament got over, and I got the strongest feeling I needed to call the doctor, the hospital, which I've never done because Lester would have called me if something major had happened. But I called anyway. I went out right before Release Society and I went outside and her doctor or her I asked for her room, and Brandon answered her nurse at the time. And I said, Hi Brandon, this is Tiffany. I'm calling to check on Whitney. And he said, What why are you calling? Has nobody called you yet? And I was like, My heart stopped, like literally, my heart's just and I'm like, called me? Nobody's called me. What's wrong? Is my daughter okay? And he said, Oh, your daughter is more than okay. He goes, her numbers have leveled out and they've been leveled out for the last four hours. They skipped the test, they're going in for surgery right now. And I just started crying. I was like, Are you kidding me? He's like, No, we're taking her out right now. I said, Okay. And I guess what had happened is the nurses being prior to him had called Lester, and so that was good. So they but Brandon knew me and thought they had called me. So that's but we Lester and I both found out that we were being told at the exact same time by two different nurses. So he was being told and I was being told at the same time because we tried calling each other, and you know, when you do that, you get busy signals. So that's what was happening between the two of us. So uh I hate to say this, but I screamed outside and the right outside the release of side doors. And uh they heard me and then I had to explain myself. But gratefully, it was a huge success. They put the vent they took out the ECMO system, they put in the tracheotomy for the first time in 25 days. My daughter video because Lester video tape uh what is it? Not video, but uh phone-to-phone where you can do audio and visual. I don't know, Apple has it. I saw my daughter on the telephone waving at me and my grandkids and mouthing, hi mom. I love you. And I just felt like this whole thing was a miracle, everything, and I almost feel I had to go through this to trust my father in heaven. I couldn't, I don't know if I mean the only thing that I could think of that would have you test your faith like this would be a loved one where you have no choice but to give it to the Lord. We say that all the time, but as mothers and I'm sure fathers too, but as a mom, we're a doer, we make things happen, and they do it because we want them done, and it's gonna happen. But these were things completely out of my control, and there was nothing I could do but truly trust Father in heaven. So it was a long road. She um the kids got to see her for the first time since all of this happened on Thanksgiving. We were able to go up there after Thanksgiving dinner, and we went and spent the evening with her, and there was a lot of hand signals and pointing because when you have a trake, you can't talk. Um a lot of frustration because she's trying to talk to us like she's just a normal conversation, and we have no idea what she's saying, but it's just nice to have her get frustrated and be happy, you know. She's in a lot of pain still. Um, she stayed in the hospital another month and um just kept getting better and better. The doctor kept telling me um when I would see her and I would get happy, he would be like, nope, don't get excited, don't get excited. Things could still happen. I said, I know, but I can celebrate the good moments. And um there was a couple times the uh second echo that was going through and down through her heart, like I told you, had shifted, and when it would touch her heart, um, her heart rate would go into AFib. And it was starting to happen four or five times in the night, and then it started happening in the morning too, and so they had to take that out, and which was a good thing because um it was getting dangerous, they were having to shock her, shock her heart every time to stop it and then restart it, and it became I mean, think about it, getting shot that many times it gets painful. Um, but uh it did the job, it fixed it. So once they took that machine out, her heart was starting to run properly again with medication. Um, she came home Christmas Eve with the understanding she was in a wheelchair, she had nerve damage in her left wrist and in her left leg. Um, she had what was called drop foot. Um, so she couldn't walk. She was in the beds for so long, she had absolutely no muscle in her arms, her legs, her body, nothing. She was, I mean, kind of like an elderly person where they stag. I mean, her muscles were just hanging on her, and she was just nothing but bones and skin. And so they had told her that it would probably be a year before she could walk. Um goodness, yeah. And I mean, we're talking an incredibly independent person, child. She's she was so independent. I'm gonna do it my way, and uh it was very frustrating to be in a wheelchair, she couldn't do a lot of stuff by herself. Um, and her left hand was basically like this all the time because of the damage in her wrists, and she couldn't feel the floor when she would step down. Um, there was like she said it felt like she was on hot rocks or hot pokers on the ground if her left foot would touch it. So there was a lot of work still ahead. Um I left uh January 20th. I came home. My husband actually flew out to Florida because, in the meantime, with all of this, for the almost six months I was there, my granddaughter went through the discussions um with the missionaries and made a decision to join the church. And so she asked her papa if he would fly out and um baptize her. And my husband, after he was so honored because when she was little, when she was a baby, he he was the one who blessed her. And we told her that, and so she thought, you know, I think it should be Papa who gets me baptized. And when we first told her we didn't know if that was gonna happen because of you know finances, um, she's like, then I'll just wait. And I'm like, Oh, no, you're not gonna wait. We know how that works. And um uh my husband kept saying, you know, I don't know how this is gonna work out. And I said, Well, you know what? In the last almost six months, I'll tell you how everything else has worked out. So if you're meant to be here, you will be here, and he said, Okay, so I set up a date, we set up a date, and um a member of our branch walked up to my husband and said, My wife and I have been talking about this, and we would really like to buy your ticket to out to Florida. We don't want you to miss this. So, in fact, we got five offers. Wow, wow, five offers from my branch alone, and one from my daughter's branch, who barely happens. So the Lord will make things happen. I don't want to say if they're meant to be, but if the if it's in the way of the Lord's blessing, he will make it happen. And so my husband flew, um, flew out for that. And the the other kind of no surprise of because of who they are, but still a big shock is when I called them and I I thanked them, and then I asked them, Would you mind sending me um the itinerary so that I can buy my ticket to go home and fly with my husband? That's what the plan was. And he said, Yeah, no problem. I gave him my email address and everything, and he wrote me and he says, Hey, check and make sure this all looks okay. I want to make sure. Um, and I said, Okay. So I looked on it and I said, Yeah, everything looks great. And I said, Is this is this it? He goes, Yeah, I'll send you, you know, I'll send you the flight once I pay for it. I said, Okay. So then I got another email like uh 20 minutes later, and I was looking down. Well, he didn't buy just my husband's ticket, he bought mine too. So that was a really big blessing. But um when I what I want to say um is when we talk about it, I've I've come to terms with if there are really big blessings, there comes really big trials, and we grow from those trials not just because we give blessings, but because it helps us become closer to our Heavenly Father, and it helps us learn to rely on Jesus Christ. And um, so I thought that was the big trial almost losing my daughter three times while I was in Florida. But sorry. On March seventeenth, my youngest daughter died. She had no medical issues. She wasn't s nothing was wrong with her. My uh she had caught the flu like every good mother does from her kids coming from school. Uh she talked to her dad uh before for his birthday. And uh she sounded terrible, but we all sound terrible when we get the flu. And we said, you know what, just get better, we'll talk to you in a week, you know, just get better. And the first day back was was St. Patrick's Day, which is the day she died. Um and uh she had told her husband she felt like he was she wasn't like lightheaded, but she'll be fine, she'll go to work. And uh she never got he never got the call that she arrived. And um the nurse, actually from the hospital, I think is what he told me, called her and told her that my daughter had come to the ER and she was bleeding internally, and that um they were life lighting her to Tepanoga's general, and that um they had given her two fights or two units of blood, and they were getting ready to leave. So if he wanted to get there before they left, he he needed to hurry. Luckily, it was only 20 minutes from their house because they lived in Saratoga Springs, Utah, and um and his mother and stepfather were able to make it there before the uh helicopter took off. And then when they got to Tefanogas, that's when he called me to tell me they don't know what's going on, we don't know why, something's happening. I'm sorry it waited so long. I just wanted to have something to tell you, mom. But we don't know what's wrong with Britannia. I said, Is she okay? Said no, she's not coherent anymore. He's like, I don't know what to do. And I said, Okay, um, keep me posted. And I hung up and I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna get to Utah because we had a really bad storm coming through that had just passed us, and it would be through Lake Tahoe area, which is what I have to pass to get to Salt Lake. And then he called back and said, the doctor wants to talk to you. So then I started talking to the doctor, and he was asking me a hundred questions. I felt like all at once it was it's all a blur. I said, are you gonna be able to save your daughter? He said, I don't know if her numbers don't go down. We don't know. He said, Where do you live? And I said, California. He says, I don't think you're gonna make it. But I think you better leave now. And I just looked at my husband and I said, What do I do? I can't drive, I can't fly fast enough. What do I do? And um I called back an hour later to tell my son-in-law that I would leave first thing in the morning as soon as the storm was clear. And it was his and that answered the phone. And I heard in the background the doctor say we're calling it. And then my son-in-law started wailing, and his mom screamed. And his stepdad said to me, I'm so sorry that your daughter didn't make it. And then I just started screaming, I guess. My husband said he could hear me from outside, he was feeding our animals, and I came running in. I didn't know what to do, like I just couldn't believe it was real. I had just I had almost lost one. Only to lose the other one. And I didn't understand. My first daughter's been sick her whole life. There's so many times that she should have passed away and she didn't. And three times right in front of my eyes within less than six months. But my one daughter, who's supposed to be completely healthy, we lose her in a matter of hours with no sign. And you know, everybody kept telling me it's okay to be mad. You know what God will understand if you're mad at him. And I looked at him and I said, Why would I be mad at God? He saved one. Then he had to take the other, and I don't understand it. But I trust him that he had a reason to take her because he was hers. Before he was mine, she was mine, and I trust that this was for the best for her, for her family, for us. I have to know and believe that what I think is the reason is the reason. And uh while I was uh in Utah sorry tried so hard not to do this. Uh when I was in Utah and uh we were putting together her celebration of life, and unfortunately she was not an active member either. Um she had stated that she wanted specific things for her if she was to ever pass away. And I was a bit upset when I when we were doing it because there were some things that I wanted that I was told. And not directly, no, but in a roundabout way that that wasn't gonna happen. And so when we got home from that, I was very upset. And I walked away and I told my husband, I said, I need to cool down. And so my emotions are out of control in more ways than one because of everything I've been going through. I said, I just need to go for a walk. I need to go for a walk, and as I'm walking, uh I'm crying. And I hear my daughter's voice. She says, Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And I said, Brianna is that you and she said, Mom, I said, why? And she's like, you know why? This was for the best. I didn't want to go, but I had to. And I'm like, the best? What? You have two kids and a husband. How is this for the best? You know? But she said, I knew, I knew why that she had to go. And I'll keep that per that kind of it's kind of private, so I'm not gonna say why. But the fact that my husband and I had discussed why we think that she had to go so young because she was just before her 31st birthday. Um, it just made me feel she, you know, nobody else would have known what my husband and I had discussed on the way down, driving on the way down to Utah. And um for her to kind of confirm that by saying, Yes, you do, mom. Yes, you do. But you know, I've I've come to realize, and you guys have done some NDs and stuff like that, where if the Lord wants you here, you will be here. But if it's time to come home, it's time to come home. And you have to believe and trust that the Lord knows better than we do. And I do. I do because the Lord saved one, but he had to take the other and I listen everything.

Alisha Coakley: 1:28:39

You're right. Right.

Scott Brandley: 1:28:43

I um I mean this this happened this year too, right? Like this is recent.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:28:59

Yeah, it happened. So my daughter died this year, but the other daughter almost died the end of last year. So within a year and a half, this all happened. You want to hear kind of something a little crazy? So I I I say crazy after this story, after everything I just told you that's happened, but to me, it's still just mind-blowing mind-blowing how the Lord works, how how involved He is with us. And I'm not my life has never been where God is answered like this. Like I have to wait months. Like I told you, we've prayed for 10 years for my grandchildren, right? So things don't always come when you want them. But um, right the day before my daughter passed away, I had asked my husband if he would give me a blessing because I was I was going through a lot, I had gone through a lot. I just needed a comfort blessing. And when he gave me the blessing, I remember distinctly thinking, what in the world did you just say? Like nothing you said applied, nothing made any sense. I was completely floored. Like I was like, I asked him, this is terrible because my husband's a very good, righteous man. He's a very good man. I said, Were you listening to God? Okay, blessing to God. Because it was just so odd. And he kind of was like, What is kind of question's that? But um I record all my blessings and I have done that for 10 years for a good reason. And it's because when you listen to a blessing, you don't remember everything. Because a lot of times we're sick or we're overwhelmed, and sometimes the blessings have a lot in it, and you don't always get to remember. So I will listen to them later, and then I get to remember the blessings that the Lord's promised. So I recorded this one too, but I actually almost re erased it because I was like, this is ridiculous. Like, this makes no sense. It has nothing to do with my what's going on. And then, of course, what happened with Brianna happened, and then we moved on. Well, two weeks later, so um, this this is how I know everything I think is final, is because my year started out with me breaking my leg. Well right after we got back, I broke my wrist. I fell out of the pigkin because I was crying, and I landed on a bunch of rocks and I broke my wrist. My husband says we're going to invest in bubble wrap after this, but but um I was in the garage trying to figure out what I could do with one hand to get because I I needed to get some things done. I was trying to figure it out, and like I told you guys, I always turn you guys on, or some, you know, a couple of the podcasts to listen when I'm working. And as I was going down, the it dawned on me. I I was looking through recordings, somehow that popped up. I didn't push it, but my phone has a mind of its own. And the recordings came up, and I saw the date right before Brianna's died. And I thought, oh, that's that blessing. You know what? I'm gonna listen to it one more time, and if it's nothing, then I'm gonna just erase it because it didn't mean anything then. So I played it and I started it, and I didn't get I remember turning it on, turning around, and walking away, and it stopped me in my tracks within probably a minute into the blessing. I realized that blessing I didn't understand was for me because Brianna was gonna pass away. Everything that was in that blessing was about my daughter dying. I I couldn't believe it. I had to listen to it again just to make sure that I was not hearing things. And then I played it for my husband that night when he got home from work, and he just stared at me and I said, Do you understand what I think this is? And he goes, This was the Lord speaking to tell you about Brianna dying the next day. And I said, Yep. So the Lord was preparing me, I just didn't understand right away because I was looking for something else, and the Lord knew I would need this blessing more later.

Alisha Coakley: 1:33:37

Um my gosh. I first of all, I am so sorry. Thank you. I know that you are so grateful for all of the miracles that you had, um it also doesn't erase the pain you know that you're having to go through now. And gosh, dang, it's great, it just isn't fun. It is the worst thing ever.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:34:15

At least I warned you.

Alisha Coakley: 1:34:18

That's true, and I didn't break tissue. But um I'm just I'm really in awe right now of your strength and like your ability to come on here and to talk about this and and to have that faith, you know, even uh even despite just having to deal with like such a sudden loss, and after everything else, you know, like that's oh my goodness, like just you caregiving, caregiving, caregiving, you know, giving so much to your older daughter, and then to have to come home and deal with all of that, you know. It's I think I'm maybe in like this, I'm I'm in like this teenager spiritual phase for some reason. I I don't know. It's like you turn 40 and all of a sudden you're just hormones are everywhere. And so my first thought is like, really heavenly father? Are you kidding me right now? You just did that? Excuse me? Like, you don't want to just like pump the brakes for a second and give her a it's just a minute to breathe. I think that that would have been really kind of you to do. All of that stuff is uh something really, really special that I think is a really, really hard thing for a lot of people to do. So it's just a testament to your faith and your, you know, I guess your love really for the savior and for Heavenly Father and his his plan, you know. Um gosh, I just my heart hurts for you right now.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:36:14

So well, you know, the reason I contacted you was um at the time I kept getting the feeling that we need uh the world needs to know that God lives and that he's alive and that miracles still happen and that he really does love us because I feel like the world has gotten so ugly so fast. And Heavenly Father does create miracles, we just need to see them. They might be tiny and minute, we might not the tire, for example, you know. Um people might chalk that up to coincidence. I didn't. There's no way. Um, and so I think we need to just start looking for those miracles instead of coincidences in the in this world today. So, you know, I uh uh there an uh I guess another example, and and I forgot to add this to the story, but in the right after her, we found out that she had taken a dive, we had moved her to emerge at uh, you know, um uh ICU for thoracic, and she was going down fast. I was standing by her bed just crying, and um, I was exhausted because her fiance hadn't gotten home yet. So I would drop the kids off at school and be up at 6 a.m., drop the kids off at school, go to the hospital, stay with my daughter, even though she didn't know I was there. And then I would turn around, go back, pick up the kids, take them home, fix them dinner, put them to bed, turn around, go back to the hospital and stay with her from like eight o'clock at night until probably one o'clock in the morning, then come back home and do it all again. Because one of the things my daughter asked me to promise her was not to leave her in the hospital alone. And it was like that was the best I could do to tell her fiance came. But I was standing there and I was exhausted and crying, and I was just and I just I said very quietly, Father in heaven, I need a hug. I need a real hug. I just need somebody to tell me that she's gonna be okay, that everything's gonna be okay. I just need a hug. Not thinking that it was gonna happen, because I don't have anybody there, but her first nurse she had in the very beginning came walking by, and his name was Norman, which happens to be my dad's name. And uh he is this big black guy, just you know, the sweetest man, sweetest man. And he stopped and he saw me crying and he was talking to her nurse. And I thought, well, I don't want to be rude. So I walked, I started walking towards him to say hi. And he came into the room and he just grabbed me and he wrapped his arms around me and he gave me the biggest hug. And I just broke down and started bawling in his shoulder, and he said, She's gonna be okay, everything's gonna be okay. And I pulled away from him and I just looked at him because I was like, I literally said this like five minutes ago. He's like, What? And I just hugged him, I said nothing, Norman, and I just hugged, you know, went back and gave him the biggest hug. But again, it's just you know, a person could call that a coincidence, and I don't, you know, I don't call that a coincidence. I believe that the Lord prompted him to do that for me because I needed it.

Scott Brandley: 1:39:58

Yeah. I wow. You know, I uh your story, like the the thing that I'm thinking about is just the importance of gratitude. Because God's given us all this gift to be here on earth and and to be with who we are, but we don't know when that time is gonna end. You know, like it could end like happen with your daughter, like just suddenly. Um but we've gotta we have to do a better job of being grateful for the people in our lives and the blessings in our lives in the moment, because we take it for granted. I I know I do. I take it for granted, and I have to. Your story reminds me to to be more grateful for the time I have right now. And the people that I have with me right now, and just to just to be glad that I have that time. My dad passed away unexpectedly a couple years ago, just a heart attack. And you know, I I haven't really I'm I'm mad at him because he could have gone and got a stint and it would have been fine, but he was stubborn.

unknown: 1:41:10

Right?

Scott Brandley: 1:41:10

So occasionally I'll be like, in my car, I'll be like, Dad, why didn't you just do that, right? But then on the other side, I am incredibly grateful for the time that I had to spend with my dad. And I try to look at that, you know, my time with him as a blessing in my life. And even though his life was cut shorter than I expected it to be, you know, like I'm just so grateful that he was in my life when he was for the time I had him. And the blessing of the gospel is we know that that relationship is gonna keep going. And I'm just I'm so grateful for that. And I'm sure you are too.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:41:51

I couldn't have gone through this without it. I I there's no way. I think I would have lost my mind somewhere back in Florida. That was extremely, extremely difficult to go through alone. Um, when I say alone, I mean without another individual there to cling to. Yeah. But uh, you know, with the loss of Brianna, um, I can honestly say that the only one that hurts more than I do is her husband. Um they were together nine years, and uh she has two children, a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old. Oh wait, I think Rory turned 11 this year. Sorry. But um, you know, the kids, you know, are dealing with it in their own way, and they're pretty resilient. But Brayden has had the hardest time, and um he she was his everything, he was an amazing man, he is an amazing man, but he was amazing to her, and he loved her so much, and he still does, and he cries, he said he still cries at night for her, and the saddest part is is he's not an active member either, and at this point, as far as I know, he has no desire and it makes me sad, but I just look at all these miracles, and I know that maybe one day if Brayden is willing to listen, that the Lord will touch him. He lives in Saratoga Springs, Utah. It's not like he doesn't have examples all around. The the outpouring was incredible. I can't even begin to tell you what an incredible neighborhood, bishop, ward, stake they had. It was incredible, and I was so grateful. Um, the outpouring was amazing for him, and it still is. So that's who if I if I could tell you both anything, and I do this to my husband now, probably a little more clingy than he'd like, but hug your husband and your wife a little bit more tonight because you just like you said, Scott, you just don't know when your last day uh is, you know. So just love your loved ones. They're not here forever. This is not our forever life.

unknown: 1:44:31

Yeah.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:44:32

But there is one after this, that's what I'm looking forward to. That's why I say I didn't lose my daughter if she just went home. I didn't lose my daughter because she's mine for eternity. Yeah, and that I will be eternally grateful for my heavenly father.

Alisha Coakley: 1:44:56

Well, Tiffany, you have our heart and our love.

unknown: 1:44:59

Thank you.

Alisha Coakley: 1:44:59

Um, and our gratitude for coming on here today and for being so vulnerable and for sharing such a beautiful and heartbreaking story at the same time. And more than that, for sharing your light and sharing your testimony with our listeners and with us. Um I can say is thank you.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:45:21

Thank you for having me. Yeah.

Scott Brandley: 1:45:25

Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share before we wrap things up, Tiffany?

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:45:30

No, I think I think we shared them all. Just trust the Lord. He really does know what's best. All right.

Scott Brandley: 1:45:40

Well, I think that that's a short, you know, words of advice, but it's powerful. And that's something that we have that we have to work on individually too throughout our lives as well, is learning how to trust the Lord. You know, and your story is a really good example of that.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:45:56

Well, if you don't, he's gonna try and show you the way. So I prefer you guys try to do it on your own instead of being stubborn like me and learning the hard way.

Alisha Coakley: 1:46:11

Um well, thank you again, Tiffany. We really do appreciate you. And a big thank you to our listeners, guys. Um, if you were touched the way that Scott and I were today, make sure that you guys do that five-second missionary work. Share Tiffany's story. Um, comment, you know, wherever you're listening to this, and just leave a message for Tiffany and let her know what her story meant to you. Um, and remember, if you guys have a story that you'd like to share and you want to come being at uh be a guest on Latterday Lights, you can reach out to us. You can head over to LatterdayLights.com or you can email us at um LatterdayLights at gmail.com.

Tiffaney Castañeda: 1:46:49

Thanks, guys.

Scott Brandley: 1:46:52

Yeah, thanks, Tiffany, and thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll see you next week with another episode of Latterday Lights. Till then, take care. Bye bye.