What would you do if a lady was sent to you with cancer and the doctors had already given up on her? Most likely, you would feel as unprepared and overwhelmed as we were. But, we all believed that this was a God sent opportunity for service, so we sprang into action. Carrots and greens were bought for juicing, she was settled into a room, and emergency consultations took place…the work began.

Our patient was a 30 something year old lady, with small children at home. Her stomach cancer was so severe that the doctors had sent her home to die. We were her only remaining hope. She was nothing but skin and bones, and terribly weak. She agreed to do what we asked her to do, and seemed really thankful for someone who cared enough to help.

Since she had stomach cancer, we felt that we needed to keep her on a juice diet to get as much nutrition into her as possible, while letting her poor stomach rest. Now in America, we would have pulled out the juicer, grabbed our veggies and got busy. But, things are not quite that easy here. We don’t have a juicer, so a little ingenuity was required. We ended up blending the veggies, then straining them through a cloth. The first time it took 2 hours to prepare one glass of juice, but after a few days, we got it down to 20 minutes. After another planning meeting, we decided on adding hydrotherapy, poultices, exercise and sunshine, and LOTS of trust in God. We had a great group of willing, though overworked, helpers.

Bright and early on Sunday morning, Inge headed up to the IMM center to take our patient her morning juice. Not long after, she came to our house to announce that our patient was missing. Her things were gone, and so was she. After a few phone calls we learned that she did not want to stay since we had not given her an IV.

I guess the whole situation reminds me of many people. We are dying, and Jesus is our only hope. But, when the treatment is not what we want, we walk away, looking for something “easier” or more to our liking. We walk away from Jesus and straight into the same things that caused the pain in the first place. Jesus is the only one who can treat and eradicate the cancerous sin in our lives. “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.”