In Christian circles, the cliche, “The Lord works in
mysterious ways” is perhaps overused. However, Team Kaleo discovered this past
month in the Ecuadorian rainforest that that doesn’t make it any less true.
In an earlier blog I told you the story of Victoria, a woman
we grew to love who was suffering from health problems that endangered her
life. During our time in El Reten we saw Victoria’s health restored and her
children’s futures made more secure. In that blog I alluded to another incident
with a sick boy named Victor. Now it’s time to tell his story…
One Tuesday night we went to church as usual to attend the
women’s group’s weekly service. Little did we know what a night we were in for!
When we arrived at the church Victoria was there, surrounded by a group of
women, and she was crying. The pastor explained that instead of having church
that night we were going to Victoria’s house to pray for a sick boy who
presumably had cholera. We immediately agreed and set off for the house.
When we got to Victoria’s house, we realized that things
were more serious than anyone had let on. Half the town was gathered around the
bed of a nineteen-year-old boy named Victor, and they were singing slow hymns
like at a funeral. All the women and children were weeping, and Victor was
lying motionless with an IV coming out of his arm. We entered the room and began to pray over him. For a while
the people from the church joined us, but as the night wore on they slowly
began to give up and go home.
For hours Victor barely moved, other than to resist his IV
or to thrash around as the fever overpowered him. We prayed for healing,
restoration, consciousness, and stability. He changed little. Finally, Victor’s
aunt arrived and took over his care. We began to ask her questions, and we
learned more about his life that told us that this was more than just an
illness.
Victor is not Victoria’s son, nor does he live in her house.
Since he was ten years old he has been working for various families in El Reten
as a farm laborer. His parents abandoned him to move east to the Amazon jungle
region of Ecuador. Any siblings that he has went with them, leaving him to fend
for himself. Kind women like Victoria have helped care for him, and everyone in
the village feels a sense of pity-induced tenderness toward Victor. His aunt
explained to us that Victor’s mother and brother have had similar episodes of
unconsciousness, mental lapses, and debilitating illness. No doctors have been
able to diagnose or treat them. What we thought was cholera was something much
more serious. Victor lay there completely unconscious as if the harshness of
his life had finally caught up with him, he had become overwhelmed with
exhaustion, and had given up on life.
Instead of simply praying for healing, we began to pray
worth and value over Victor. We explained to him that even though all his loved
ones have abandoned him and he spent his childhood doing hard manual labor,
that doesn’t mean he is worthless. We prayed that God would let him know that
life is worth living and that he is loved. After a while, his aunt decided to
take matters into her own hands. She began to perform some healing rituals of
dubious origin, which made us nervous. She attempted to “push the palpitations
of his intestines back up to where they belong” by rolling a scalding hot glass
bottle of water over his stomach, which obviously caused him to thrash around
in pain. As this went on we began to feel like she was involved in some things
that would actually hinder his healing, and we decided she needed to leave the
room. Getting her out, however, turned out to be harder than we anticipated.
After an hour of praying and not-so-subtly suggesting that she go rest in the
other room, she finally left.
We shut the door and prayed for him without any
interruptions or resistance. For a few minutes Victor opened his eyes and made
eye contact with Robby as he explained to him that he is loved. His fever
cooled and he began to sleep peacefully. Even though Victor didn’t wake up, we
finally felt like he was at peace and we had done all we needed to do. We went
home, and the next day Victor was taken to a larger town with a hospital. They
concluded that he has brain damage that they hope will eventually heal. We have
lost track of where Victor is now, how his illness is doing, or how things
turned out. It was frustrating to have become that involved in his life and
then to not know what came of our efforts.
Two days before we left El Reten, God gave us the closure we
were hoping for. During a service of prayer and fasting over our ministry that
the church hosted for us, Victoria stood up to tell us how much our presence
had meant to her. Instead of talking about her own healing like we expected,
she repeated Victor’s story to us. When she got to the end, she explained that
more had come of that than we had imagined.
When we had closed the door on Victor’s aunt after we felt
that she was using dark powers to try to heal him, she had vented to Victoria
and her husband that she had no use being there if we wouldn’t let her help.
She threatened to leave and asked why they trusted us to be there in their
house. They explained that we were Christians and that it was because of our
faith and diligent prayers that Victor would be healed. They told her that we
were an example of what real faith looks like.
Apparently this image stuck with her. A few weeks later she
came to Victoria and her husband and asked for help. It turns out she has been
in an adulterous relationship with her husband’s cousin, and has separated from
her husband. She was impacted by the faith of a group of random Americans
praying for a boy they didn’t know in a faraway village in Ecuador and decided
that what we have must be real. She asked Victoria and her husband to help her
return to the church, and she then asked the church to help her reconcile with
her husband. One of the highly respected men of the church in El Reten is going
to go with her to talk to her husband and repair their relationship.
In all of this we were able to see God’s hidden purposes. The
whole situation had been very challenging for us, especially since we didn’t
really get to see Victor healed. We wondered at times what the point of our
participation was. We also wondered if we had offended his aunt or freaked
anybody in the village out. It wasn’t until weeks later, but we eventually got
to hear that God had a purpose for every person who was in that room that
night. Victor’s illness was necessary to get us there to pray for him. His aunt
was there because she needed to see a true expression of Christian faith.
Victoria and her husband were there because they knew us and could speak up to
defend us and our faith to Victor’s aunt. We still don’t know where Victor is
today or how he is doing, but we know that God works all things for the good of
those who love him, and that his hidden purposes were fulfilled that night in
El Reten.
