In a snap anything can happen. The snap I’m going to tell you about happened to bring a smile to a little boy’s face. His name is Bryan and we met him last Friday at a place called The Mustard Seed, the Mustard Seed is a place for youth to live who have disabilities and are abandoned by their families. The place had so much peace that you could tangibly feel God’s presence in there and on the children who lived there. It was a place filled with God’s love
Bryan was one of the first children we met when we arrived and immediately he made us aware of his hearing problem, which of course was that he couldn’t hear anything, he was completely deaf, and couldn’t even read lips. So our limited Spanish was useless when it came to communicating with him. One of the girls on our squad, Katie, thankfully knew sign language and could communicate with him and of course she became his favorite. Let’s be honest Katie is most people’s favorite person, she is just that likable, love ya girl. Bryan had another problem that he was battling and that was anger/attention deficit disorder, which would often cause him to hit the other children when we they would pose a threat to taking away his attention, in other words when they had our attention instead of him.
One such incident happened while he was sitting next to me and Dura underneath one of the verandas, he had us wrapped around his little finger, he had me rubbing his back and arm while he basked in Dura’s smile. It was all good until one of the other children came and sat down and wanted us to play with her, he got right up and hit her and screamed at her. We pulled him back and told him as best we could with the limited communication we had with him that it isn’t ok to hit other people. I can hardly blame him for acting out in a physical manner, I suppose I would too if I couldn’t communicate with people through words. Then Dura suggested asking if we could pray for his ears and hearing, how do you disagree with such a suggestion? I went off to find Katie to ask him if he would allow us and also to allow him to know what we are doing. She graciously came over and asked and he nodded is head in agreement. So we prayed.
Honestly I was expecting this healing prayer to last for at least 20 minutes. I wasn’t expecting the healing to happen so fast, but it did. After we prayed that first time for 5 minutes we asked if he could hear anything, and to our amazement he nodded his head yes. Let me repeat that, without Katie signing to him we asked him in Spanish with our mouths if he could hear anything and he nodded his head yes. Incredible! This boy that couldn’t read lips and couldn’t hear responded to our verbal question. So we tested out his hearing first Dura snapped in his left ear and to our amazement he turned his head and smiled as if for the first time he heard what a snap sounded like! Then I tried it out in his right ear and snapped and he turned and rewarded me with a smile as well. We realized though that his hearing still wasn’t great so we prayed again and retested and it was better, much better. After a few more questions we told little Bryan that his Heavenly Father had just healed him and that He loved Bryan so much that he died for his sins so he could live for all eternity with God. Bryan was all smiles and to our shock he stood up and walked over to the girl he had hit just moments before and gave her a giant hug. This was the first time we saw any of the children hug each other. God is so good, He has healed and is continuing to heal little Bryan. Bryan still can’t talk but I know that God will heal him completely. Who knew a snap could bring so much joy?
