In the first message of The Names series, Pastor Woody shared a letter from his nephew about how God has recently worked in his family’s life in the mission field. He began by sharing about a fellow missionary’s loss of her father and some vivid dreams about death.
I had been struggling, myself, with a fear that I might lose someone I loved. It was a subtle fear that lurked in the back of my mind. Looking back now, we all have a sense that these thoughts and this heaviness was coming from a spirit of death. The Spiritual Forces of Evil (to quote from Ephesians) had taken the form of death, and we’d had to wrestle with these despairing thoughts.
On Tuesday evening, while I was outside watering our garden, Hope [my young daughter] fell into the pool and started to drown. She was in long enough that when the other children called me over, she was lifeless. Her face was purple and her body was limp. When Helen [my wife] and I started CPR, I called out loud to Jesus and asked that He save my baby girl. Eventually water came out of her mouth, she vomited, and then began to breathe again.
It was by far the scariest moment of our lives. As she started to breathe and cough and cry, I picked her up (she was still limp and lethargic) and prayed that any damage that had been done would be reversed. I asked that oxygen would get to her brain and that any cells that had died would be brought back to life. I asked that all of the water would be out of her lungs.
Our neighbors took us to the hospital where she was given oxygen and eventually an X-ray was taken. Finding no water in her lungs, they cleared us to go home and Helen and I took turns sleeping with Hope in the bed between us.
Since then, Helen and I have picked Hope up a thousand times to hug and kiss her. We’ve held on to our other children as well and had a sweet time as a family gathering together to thank Jesus for Hope.
Last night, our fellow missionaries came over for our weekly night together of a meal and prayer. We walked through the incident with them and prayed through each part of it…asking Jesus to show us where He was during the whole thing. We trust that He loves our daughter even more than we do and we read Psalm 18 together where David speaks of how, “In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried out to my God for help.” David describes God coming to his rescue, furious that darkness would dare harm His child. “He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters, He delivered me from my strong enemy.” In the Psalm, David worships God because He is a rescuer. And so, we worshiped God the Rescuer.
Here is where it gets interesting….
Our missionary friend, Karen, told us that before they came to our house they were visiting with their neighbors Dora and her son Ali. The neighbors invited them to come to something else but Karen explained that, no, they couldn’t come because they needed to be with their friends because they had just gone through something very traumatic. As she was explaining what had happened (Dora speaks no English so Ali was translating) Karen said that suddenly Dora went pale, her eyes widened and she stretched her arm out so that Karen could feel the goosebumps. She explained that she had had a dream in which she watched our youngest daughter fall into the pool and almost drown but that she survived.
Karen and her husband both replied that, yes, that is what had happened and that Jesus had saved her.
We’ve been asking specifically that Jesus would reveal Himself to these families in dreams and visions. The Lord has come to this woman in a dream and is revealing Himself as the Rescuer.
I am looking forward to bringing Hope in my arms to this kind woman and telling her the story of how I cried out to Jesus to save my baby girl.
I don’t know why Jesus chose to spare Hope when I cried out to Him and yet, others have cried out before and lost their children. All I know is that what was meant for evil can be turned to good. And so I am praying that the story of how the Savior saved Hope will now will be part of the story of how He saved an entire people who don’t know Him yet.
NOTE: Names in this letter have been changed to protect missionaries serving in areas hostile to Christianity.