Healing in the Mountains

Just one more day and his little boy would have died.

For nine miles the anxious father carried his severely burned five-year-old down a rugged mountain road hoping our visiting medical team could save him. When we first saw him, the boy was dying. His scalded arm was scabbed over and oozed with infection. Quickly cleaning and dressing the wound, our team agreed: if the father had waited one more day, gangrene would have killed the boy.

We were thrilled to play a part in saving this young life. We also desperately wanted opportunities to share the gospel with the never-reached people groups in the region. This would be difficult. The communist government gave our team permission to bring school supplies and medical treatment to this area just once a year. Official escorts followed us everywhere to ensure we had no opportunity to evangelize.

Two days later, it was clear God had miraculously healed the boy. Amazingly, his burns had been replaced by healthy new pink skin. Not only did God snatch him from death and heal his arm, but God opened the father’s spiritual eyes. He was a folk Buddhist, which involves worship of ancestors and animal sacrifices to the spirits of the land under a veneer of Buddhist practices.

Then for one brief moment while the escorts were away, God opened the door for us to share about our God who is both Healer and Savior. It was a lot for the father to process—he had never before heard the name of Jesus. But light shone in his eyes as he acknowledged he believed because only the true God had healed his son.

We are planning a prayer trek in his region and hoping to locate him to help him and his family grow in their newfound faith in the God who heals.

- from a cross-cultural worker in the Buddhist world