09ke0908rl13 - The Story...

Over the past few weeks we have witnessed the power of a story, and how it can bring hope to a hopeless situation.

Diana is a 13 year-old girl from Mombasa who we met at Bethany Kids in the hospital one Wednesday while praying with patients. Diana had been struggling with sickness since October 2008. In August of 2009 Diana was diagnosed with Hydro-Cephalous, fluid trapped in the brain which can cause severe brain damage. Within three weeks she had three surgeries attempting to drain the infectious fluid in her brain, but nothing was working. Even after going home for two weeks, she had to once again travel ten hours back to Kijabe, this time with an Abdominal Aneurism. On October 22^nd she lapsed into a coma, after already suffereing weakness on the left side throughout September and October. Even after two more surgeries to release the pressure in her brain, the doctors had little hope in medicine to heal Diana.

But the faith of Diana's mother Florence never wavered. Florence was a mother of three who knew what it ment to trust in God. Even when the doctors were giving her no earthly hope, she trusted in her savior to be the ultmate healer. She never gave up believing that God was going to heal her daughter.

On the 31^st of October Florence woke up to find that Diana had moved in the middle of the night. She went back to sleep, not sure of what she saw, but woke the next morning to Diana sitting up in her hospital bed. At that time Diana could not speak, but was able to give slight movements and respond to doctors. Within two days time, she was able to speak again. By the time that Sarah and Alyssa met her on our Wednesday hospital visits she was able to greet them, and even sing a song. The doctors were amazed and the Chaplins called her a living miracle.

When we first met Diana and Florence it was just four days after Diana's unexplainable awakening. Within three weeks we made four visits to Florence and Diana each time coming to love them more and more. Each visit was better than the last as Diana improved and Florence radiated of God's faithfulness. We personally grew in our own faith as Florence shared with us hers. We discovered that faith in God's healing is something that can grow each time you tell a story of God's mighty hand. We found ourselves longing to go back simply to listen to the wisdom that poured from Florence's mouth. As we began to tell the team and our family and friends back home of Diana's story, the faith inside of ourselves began to grow. The story of Diana began to impower the team in faith, to believe that healings could and were going to happen.

This is just one example of the power of a story, and how it can bring hope to a hopeless situation.

If you are facing a hopeless situation let this story rise up inside of you. Let it bring hope to your life, to your situation, to your story. The Jesus that raised Lazarus from the dead and healed those who were sick is the Jesus that is living in each of us. His power is alive and at work, we just need to have faith!

Our last visit to the hospital was bitter sweet as we found that Florene and Diana had gone home to Mombasa. We continued with our visits and met a woman, Winney, who was also facing an impossible situation. Her son Allan who was 6 and had C.P. had been suffering from severe pneumonia. He was first diagnosed in Nairobi a month earlier, but the doctors in that hospital had given Winney little hope during Allans stay in the ICU. When she came to Kijabe she found it refresshing that although the doctors were at a loss of what to do, they ultimatly trusted God and encouraged her to pray. After she told us Allans story we began to encourage her with the story of Florence and Diana. Immediately her face lit up because she knew what God had done through Diana. Florence had visited her the day that she arrived at Kijabe to encourage her faith in God's healing power. We were able to just talk of God's faithfulness and how he was going to do the same work in Allan.

As our time here in Kijabe comes to an end, we want to carry these stories of faith with us back home. Like Florence and Diana, our leaving Kijabe will be bitter sweet. We miss our family and friends from back home, but we will greatly miss the love and kindness of the people here. But we know that God's faithfulness will continue, and we expect that these stories will also.

In Faith,

Alyssa and Stephanie