2 stories of miraculous salvation

Two interesting stories were published in the weekend papers. One in the local rag and the second in the Mishpacha weekend newspaper (Hebrew).

The Mishpacha story was about someone who lost his tefillin two months ago. He lost it on a bus in Jerusalem. After searching for them as much as he could, he was directed to an organization that specializes in recovering lost tefillin. he contacted them and gave his information and for two months he did not have tefillin.

He could not afford to purchase a new set, so he had to make do with borrowing from others and gmachim. After two months, he went out and bought himself a new bag for tefillin. He then said to Hashem, "Hashem, I have done all I can do. I bought a new bag but I cannot afford new tefillin. I have done my hishtadlus, now it is up to You."

The story as reported is that the very same day a representative from Eged's Lost and Found division brought in a pair of tefillin to the organization who identified them based on simanim as belonging to the above fellow.

They contacted him and the very same day he had his tefillin back and placed in his new bag.

The second story was from the local rag, Hadash.

The story goes that a mehadrin bus (not belonging to Egged) was on its way from bet Shemesh to Jerusalem. When approaching the Castel, the driver of the bus fainted and lost control of the bus. On the decline of the highway, the bus got out of control and was weaving.

A passenger laid under the seat of the driver and slowly manually depressed on the brakes. The bus came to a stop just before crossing over the median and bursting into the opposite side of the highway into oncoming traffic.

Nobody was injured and the driver was taken to the hospital to be examined.

The passengers declared that in the merit of having been careful about travelling in a mehadrin bus, they merited the miracle of being saved from a terrible accident.

These are both interesting stories. In the first story though, why did the guy not check Egged Lost and Found? Maybe he did and on the day he checked they had possibly not yet been turned in? He could have checked back with them once a week during the two months... I am not really sure. However, they were returned to him on the same day he went out and purchased his bag. It is clearly a function of his emuna. Maybe only at that point was his level of emuna clear....

The second story - if the merit of riding a mehadrin bus saved them, why was the merit not enough to completely avoid the accident? Why was the driver, who was driving a mehadrin bus, not protected from fainting?