Are Prayers Answered?

Yesterday in Sunday School in the Half Moon Bay ward we were discussing answers to prayers and the fact that a key to getting answers to prayers is to Ask and Seek. In discussing examples of answered prayers, I shared one from our family that is a perfect example of an incident that can be viewed by a believer (like myself) as an answered prayer but by a non-believer as an unanswered prayer. _ This morning, exploring a new Family History feature at MyHeritage.com, I came across some results that made me realize we have another such example. High School Yearbooks are now indexed by name and crosslinked to pictures. Here are 3.

Cool Pictures of my Dad Lloyd Ross McGee from 10th grade at Jordan High School in 1943; Junior Year in 1944 in American Fork Utah and Senior year in 1945 at American Fork. MyHertitage, in addition to indexing, also estimates the birth year and gave this:

which jumped out at me since Dad's birth year is 1926 instead of 1928. His natural graduation class would have been 1944. As soon as he graduated in May of 1945, he joined the Army and was in basic training by the time World War II ended in Europe in May and in the Pacific in August. He ended up being sent to Europe as part of the after-war occupation. While that was still a dangerous time, it was far less dangerous than 1944 had been. So what was the Miracle that kept my father safe during the war? For that, you need to jump back a few years, before the war. Somewhere between 5th and 9th grade, the Ross McGee family was living in Granite Utah. They were a large and religious family, their family prayers often included requests for protection from harm and danger. But one cold winter day during that time, their home caught fire. It had something to do with warming engine oil on the stove that then caught fire. The home was destroyed and the family moved in with Aunt and Uncle Washburn a block or so down the road but in the course of the disruption, my Dad missed a year of school and got delayed one year from his peers that he had started with. So were their prayers NOT answered because they lost their home? ...or was my father's delayed schooling the REAL answer to all those prayers? Believers and non-believers can view the same events and have their own desires confirmed.