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by Randy Bishop

When the pressure's on, God often grants his children a peace beyond words. But on a game show?

Mike Menz, who won $500,000 on ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" says that's exactly what happened to him. The Greeneville, Tennessee, resident says he had a supernatural sense that everything was going to be okay as he answered questions worth progressively more money.

"When I was sitting there, I was praying 'Thy will be done,' " says Menz, 37. "If you leave yourself open to God, he'll find you, on a game show or not."

At peace, he was able to leave the show with $500,000 rather than take a risk on a question he had no idea how to answer. "It (winning $1 million) wasn't meant to be," he says. He doesn't regret that he didn't win the million. Even before the final question, Menz says he was just guessing at the answers.

Menz won the $500,000 by identifying the Rub'al Khali as a vast desert in the Middle East. Since he had run out of lifelines and was baffled, he refused to attempt to answer the next question asking which of four pieces of currency was the first to use the motto In God We Trust.

Although she couldn't help her daddy, Menz's seven-year-old daughter Sarah knew the answer (the two-cent piece), because she looked through a trivia book given to him by coworkers a few days before the show taped. Unfortunately, Menz hadn't had a chance to skim through it.

In addition to his wife Melinda, Menz's parents were at the taping in New York and his mom also shot some arrow prayers to heaven. Menz has 11 siblings and he says his mother was praying that people would see that children from big families can succeed.

With the money he won, Menz gave $50,000 to his church, Reformation Lutheran, for a 25-passenger van. The van is being used for youth and family events, like a recent trip to the Knoxville Zoo, and for the church's widows group. Other Lutheran churches in the area have benefited from the new van, too. "It's been nice that there have been more combined activities," Menz says.

An orthopedic surgeon, Menz says he didn't go on the show as much for the money as for the challenge. "I loved game shows as a kid, and I always wondered how I'd do."

He hasn't changed his life since he won big. "If you're happy with your life, you're not going to change a lot of things," he says. "The big splurge was I got a (Toyota) convertible." He says he and his wife will save much of the money for their two children, Sarah and four-year-old Max.

A Christian Reader original article.

A Christian Reader original article.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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