My Healing
As I presently write of my healing, over twenty eight years have passed since Jehovah Rapha, the Great Physician raised me from the doors of death and restored my health. I am now over eighty eight years old and our awesome Lord has given me strength and made possible, through his grace, the opportunity to continue to share the wonders of his magnificent name in many nations of the world.
It was another pleasant visit to Italy where we were visiting our daughter Patsy, her husband Tony and our beautiful granddaughters. We had just flown in from Heidelberg, Germany where I had taught in a Domata Bible School the previous week.
Patsy had an issue with her washing machine and knowing that her daddy tried to repair anything that broke down asked me if I could fix it. Before she left for the Czeck Republic we disconnected it and drug it outside onto the patio where I could look it over. I remember getting down on all fours to look under the machine from the backside. While in that position, I put my right elbow on the patio stones and in doing so, I scratched it.
At the time, I thought nothing of it. I had worked a good bit of my life and had often gotten cut or scratched. This scratch however was different. The very next day, my elbow began to swell and stiffen and was painful. The following day my condition worsened. We prayed but seemingly there were no results. Throughout the night I experienced discomfort.
Patsy was in Prague and was to come back to Rome on Friday, May 15. Tony felt that if possible, she should get a flight for her to come home a day earlier. Though the infection had started in my arm, my condition was not the reason he wanted her to come back on Thursday. The ticket cost $600 less to get the earlier flight. He didn’t realize it then but the Spirit of God was urging him to insist on her return. He had to be gone on Friday and would have been away, leaving us alone with my ever worsening problem. Patsy got in that Thursday evening.
The next morning, I knew I was in trouble. The arm was swollen still more and by early that afternoon I became nauseous and Paulo Cavallo took me to a clinic in Fregene and while there, I vomited. After the examination they loaded me in an ambulance and took me to the nearby hospital in Aurelia. They gave me a shot and told me to come back if my condition worsened.
At 4:00 p.m. they sent for a doctor who came to the house. He played down the problem but gave me medication and said he thought that through the medication, I would improve. Just be patient!
At 5:00 p.m. Patsy called Mark Hankins to have him check with a doctor there in the states. Mark called back at 5:30 and said that his doctor said that it needed to be treated immediately. I would need to have an IV with antibiotics injected into my system. If my arm would swell too much, the only way they could give me an IV was to filet my arm to relieve the pressure and find a vein for the IV. He said if I had not improved within an hour, they should get me to the hospital immediately.
Ginger called Patsy at the school at 7:30 p.m. Marco Braida came and drove us to the Aurelia hospital. They checked me in but did not know what was wrong with me. Some thought I had a broken arm. They told Patsy and Ginger to go home about 10:00 p.m. Tony stayed with me at the hospital. I was in terrible pain
In that time, the story became fragmented. I remember the ride to the hospital; sitting in a wheelchair for what seemed like hours, waiting for my turn to be examined. I remembered people from the Bible School coming in and gathering around the bed and praying for me. There is a part of the story that I don’t remember, but was related to me later by Ginger. She said that two of the students who had married several months before came into the room. I awakened and I looked at them and began to prophesy to them. The prophecy included strong exhortation and also had a great deal to do with the importance of their having children. In all the time of their marriage, they had never consummated the act of marriage. Also included in the prophecy was another couple who had recently gotten married. Ginger said the prophecy went on for a long time. After I finished speaking, I lapsed back into unconsciousness.
At 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning Patsy was awakened and called Tony. She thought something was wrong. She felt that I was dying and they weren’t doing anything. Tony went to get a nurse. At that time, I was hardly able to walk. I was losing my motor skills. I tried to go to the bathroom and hardly made it. My legs wouldn’t work. I wanted to clean up and shave. I couldn’t hold up my head. I remember getting shaving cream all over my head. I later fell to the floor, hitting my chin on the sink. The doctor came and said something was wrong and began giving me antibiotics and cortisone. By this time, my arm was extremely swollen and open sores were beginning to break out.
Different ones stayed with me throughout the next day. One of the students named Dina stayed with me that night. I was having nightmares and she prayed with me and that really helped. During that time, little effort was put forth to find my problem. The next day, Paulo Cavallo came and in his Italian manner rattled the chains of the medical staff and told them to get busy and find out what was wrong with me.
One evening while I was unconscious, Patsy asked the doctor if she could spend some time in the room alone with me. They told her she could stay 5 minutes. She ended up being there 45 minutes. She took Laura Pezzoli with her and they both began to pray for me. While they were praying, I awakened and began to speak. I don’t remember any of this but they related that I said: “Look, there is a giant in the corner.” Laura spoke up and said, “David killed a giant and we can take care of this giant.” But then Patsy said that she had been praying for angels to help me so she asked me; Daddy, is that a good giant or a bad giant? I replied, It is a good giant!
One of the students at the Bible School told Patsy that the Lord told her that part of the healing would be through my taking communion. In the evening, Patsy came in with the only communion elements she could find; bread and Italian “grape juice.” It was a sweet time and the presence of the Lord was very real.
Trina and Mark had come to Europe for meetings and Trina caught a plane and came to Rome to be with me and her mom. I saw her very little but she and her mother stood on the word of God for me. They prayed and during the night they would begin to sing truth filled songs and hymns while they were in bed together. “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” Psalms 32:7. They would boldly declare the faithfulness of God’s word. The thought of my dying only entered Ginger’s mind once.
In the next few days, consciousness came rarely and only at small intervals. One day I awakened with the awareness there were many other people in the room with me. Hovering around me was medical staff. I became aware that I had wires attached and hoses were connected to me in various places. I was being electronically monitored and was IV’d. I was cathetered and because my kidneys had failed, I was on dialysis. Consciousness was fleeting but I was coming back.
Then an awareness of the presence of the Lord began to come to me. The things I was experiencing physically and mentally were like a nightmare but I began to remember promises from the Bible. I began to quote Isaiah 54:17 and Psalms 118:17. In my physical misery, I began to praise the Lord. I later found that these were the very scriptures that Ginger and Trina had been declaring for my healing.
In my intensive care room, the nurses would be away sometimes and I would lift my garbled voice in praise and song. It was loud enough to echo down the halls and disturb other patients. I remember the nurse coming to the room and telling me to be quiet. I told her to close the door. She did and I continued to praise the Lord.
That day, Ginger, Trina, Patsy and Tony came. They could not come in the room but talked to me from the door. I remember talking to Ginger and saying: “Ginger, the devil tried to kill me.”
For a few days, though I was on strong antibiotics, I had no name for the problem. Finally the main doctor came in and said that the infection was septicemia, a blood infection. I knew that it was evil, Satanic and an invasion of destruction into my blood stream. I found out later that most people who had septicemia in Italy died.
Sometime later I remembered an incident that had taken place a couple of years prior to this. I was teaching in a Bible School in Kathmandu, Nepal. The translator was a lady from Holland. She and her husband had worked in Nepal for some time and she especially had a good handle on the language. One day she asked if I would like to join her and some others and go to one of the villages in the hills outside Kathmandu to see a temple where they offered human sacrifices. I agreed to go and in the afternoon she flagged a truck that was going that direction. After dismounting from the truck later, we trekked for perhaps a mile and a half to a village where the temple was supposed to be located.
We found the village but after several inquiries failed to find the temple. We were about to leave when the Dutch lady asked a couple of young men where the temple of Durga was located, they knew the place and agreed to take us there. After viewing the house in which was the temple of goddess Durga, they asked if anyone would like to go in. No one else wanted to go but I was curious and so after removing my shoes, one of the men took me up the dark staircase to a room on the top floor.
In this room only shafts of light from the cracks near shuttered windows dimly lit the room. Around the walls were grotesque clay masks. Hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room was a large drum with skins on either side. On the far wall was the goddess sitting with a basin to catch the blood on the floor in front of her. After taking some video footage, I made a quick departure.
The rest of the group were not at the temple but were up the street talking to some men near the street corner. Our translator was conversing with the men. They seemed to be village elders and were giving her the details of the temple and the goddess. They said that every twelfth year, the village lived in fear because some undesignated individual would be kidnapped and become the sacrificial offering to Durga. Warning signs were posted throughout the town, warning people not to spend the night there. As I was listening, an old man with thick glasses began pointing at me and saying something. Our translator’s husband understood the man and told me the man was saying that if I took pictures in the temple, I would die! Durga would eat my blood! I knew scriptures and quoted them and for a few days would say I John 4:4 and others. But as time went on, I forgot the declarations I had made earlier.
Was the words spoken by the old man, singling me out, a curse? Or was this just something that happened? God knows that answer. Certainly this foul disease was from the devil and it affected my blood. I do know this; I learned not to take lightly and for granted the territory of evil. I also learned that we must be bold and aggressive in our confrontation with the powers of darkness. Remember Elisha spoke to King Joash about the arrows of God’s deliverance and then told the king to smite the ground. Joash half-heartedly hit the ground with the arrows three times. The prophet angrily said to the king he should have smitten the ground many times and because of the king’s casual attitude, the enemy would not be completely destroyed. You must know the word of His promise and have a determined faith.
It would be nice to say that all went well for me until my release two weeks later. I had to deal not only with the physical and mental anguish but also with an evil male nurse. I lost weight and was so weakened, I could hardly move. Recovery was slow and very painful. The bed was too short. The language barrier proved a problem throughout the stay. My nerves were on edge and the roommate would play the Italian television with the volume up. I remember waking up one night screaming and thrashing around with a host of nurses holding me down. I finally settled down.
Strange things were happening to me physically. During one of my crisis nights, Patsy and Laura came and stayed with me. I was in a lot of pain all night long. Laura and Patsy rubbed my feet and prayed, keeping me settled down. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I turned the corner. Relief came. There was rejoicing in my heart. Surely the Lord intervened. His ministering handmaidens were a wonderful part of the restoration process. The skin on the palms of my hands and the bottom of my feet just peeled off like pieces of a glove, fingerprints, callouses and all. Beneath was new skin like that of a baby.
I remember my first steps. It seemed like I weighed a ton. After about three steps, I would have to return to the bed. More steps came and I finally made it to the bathroom on my own. One night another patient who shared the room had hallucinations and the nurse was trying to hold him down. I got out of bed and helped the nurse restrain him until more help came.
What a wonderful day it was when they brought my clothes and I made my way from the hospital to the car and then on to home in Fregene. I stayed many more days with Tony and Patsy and finally it was determined I could travel. Scott came and escorted his mom and I back to the states.
As I look back on all that took place, my desperate condition and my recovery, I can say my deliverance was a supernatural response to the prayers of many people. All over the world people were praying for me. A church in California prayed around the clock for my recovery. I am sure that according to Psalms 34:7, the angels of God were there helping me and ministering to me. During this crisis, the Lord spoke to the heart of Betty Meier, one of our great intercessors in Burlington, in the early hours of the morning on different occasions to travail for my recovery. In my travels today, I meet people who tell me they prayed for me at that time.
Does God heal? Does He answer prayers spoken in faith? I stand today, a living testimony that He does. By Satan’s standards I was marked for death, but God is greater than the evil one. You too can put your trust in Him for He is faithful. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever!!