I heard the following story last month while we were in Haiti. I’d be robbing you of an opportunity to expand your faith if I didn’t share. Enjoy! 🙂
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We were on a tour of Mission of Hope in Haiti when the interns led us to a dome-shaped building and stopped.
Months before the earthquake hit, Mission of Hope (MOH) was offered an ambulance. The man believed the Lord was asking him to give it to them. However, MOH had no need for one and denied the offer, fearing the ambulance would sit idle on their property. The man insisted and eventually Mission of Hope accepted.
After the earthquake hit in 2010, Mission of Hope’s ambulance was one of two vehicles that was able to make it in and out of Port Au Prince. Today, when people see MOH’s ambulance drive by, it offers a sign of hope.
“There’s the ambulance that saved my mother.”
“That ambulance saved my brother.”
The building we stood outside was turned into an operating room after the earthquake. They performed endless surgeries, working 15 hours a day for 3 months. Doctors came from all over the world to help.
One day, a woman came in with a badly damaged leg. It needed to be amputated. At the time, the doctors didn’t have anymore anesthesia. When the doctor shared this with her, she told him she needed to have the surgery and gave him permission to operate without any medicine.
As the doctor began, the woman and her friend held hands and began singing hymns.
They sang hymns through the entire operation. She didn’t cry or scream out in pain once. She only sang.
The doctor, who wasn’t a Christian, walked out after the surgery and fell to his knees.
“Truly there must be a God.”
Years later, the interns were leading a group tour. They shared the story of a doctor who performed an amputation on a woman without anesthesia. The woman and her friend sang hymns and Lord worked a miracle.
When they finished, a man stepped forward with his family.
“I was that doctor,” he told them.
The man had returned to the place where he had seen the faith of a humble Haitian woman and the power of God’s love. This time, he brought his family to serve with him.
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This story gave me goosebumps and brought me to tears when I first heard it. But it also challenged me to examine the strength of my faith.
How often do I enter into the most painful moments of my life singing praise? How often do I let what I know about God eliminate the fear of what I know about the world?
