“I had a very hard heart. I did not want to hear about the white man’s religion or help them translate their God’s words into my language. I believed in the religion of my people, and that was it.”
R, an elder in a Y people community, shared his personal testimony at a gathering of his people in our town. He just returned from the capital city after an emergency heart procedure.
In late July, R had a heart attack in his community, and was sent on a 3 day-long boat ride to the nearest airstrip, where he was flown to our town and rushed to the local hospital for treatment. Two of my Y friends, who are believers, asked me to go quickly to the hospital to pray for R because he was going to die.
At the hospital, we prayed that God would heal R, and give him another chance to receive Jesus as his savior.
As we finished praying, an older Y man, chewing coca leaves, came into the room. He was the tribe’s shaman. Other family members had called him to perform a “healing” by communicating with R’s spirit. Shortly after the shaman left the room, R went into cardiac arrest.
The medics were able to resuscitate him, but he remained unconscious. We continued to pray for R, and ask God to heal him so that the unbelieving Y people would see God’s power, and give their lives to Him. God responded, “I will heal him in a way that I will receive the most glory.”
The next day, my mission partner also went to pray for R before he was flown to Bogota for emergency treatment. After arriving in Bogota, the doctors stabilized him, and he awaited surgery. I had to be in Bogota to prepare for a trip to the US, so I was able to visit R in the hospital there.
What R told me was amazing! “I died, and I saw my body laying on the hospital bed. My spirit started walking down a narrow path, and a man with a white beard and bright white clothes stood at the end of the path. He told me, ‘I am Jesus, and there is no other path to heaven than through me. Everything in the world has no value. Follow me. Go back and tell your people that I am the only way.’”
While R was recovering in the hospital, he suffered a ruptured appendix. Had God healed him in my town, and had he gone back to his community, his appendix would have ruptured there, and he would have had no access to treatment. But while in Bogota, R was able to begin reading the Gospel of John, and I left him my iPod with Bible stories and praise music in the Y language. He had two months in the hospital to glean from God’s Word the message that he is now sharing with his people.
Please pray for R as he returns to his community with the message of Jesus Christ. He will be one of only two believers there. Pray that God would use R to start a church there, so that others can hear the message that God gave to R.
