Fiona S

Quite a few years ago I went on a mission trip to Peru. Our team started off in Lima, which is damp, muggy and below sea level, and before we got our bus to our final destination I managed to get a chest infection. We went ahead with the bus journey to Arequippa, up in the mountains at an altitude of 2325 meters. I don’t know if it was the sharp rise in altitude that did it, but my chest became rapidly worse over the next two days. By the second night I was in acute pain, coughing up blood and all the signs were that one of my lungs had collapsed – I’ve seen this in my previous job as a nurse. I asked one of the children to phone the rest of the team and say I couldn’t take part in the trip the next day.

At that point in my relationship with God, I didn’t believe that he performs miracles nowadays, including healing. I was part of a church where it is taught that miracles took place in the time of the Bible but that God no longer works in that way. However, in the bus journey on the way to Arequippa I had sat next to a local missionary who said that since there was so little access to medicine, he had often prayed for people to be healed. He had many stories to tell of God answering those prayers, and I listened with interest.

After the phone call had been made cancelling my place on the trip, I lay on my bed – on one side or the pain was unbearable - reviewing my options. I did not want to get treatment at the local hospital, which was extremely basic, as I suspected it might even make me worse. I could not be airlifted from Arequippa to a hospital in Lima, because it is too dangerous to airlift a patient with a collapsed lung.

Quite calmly, I thought, ‘I’ll phone that missionary in the morning and ask him to come and pray for me. Then God will heal me.’

I had absolutely no doubt that I would get healed. I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep, despite the pain I was in, and slept all night.

The next morning the rest of the team prayed together for the day ahead and also for me.

‘Shall we assume that Fiona’s still not well enough to come, and just go without her?’ said someone at the end.

‘Nah,’ said everyone else. ‘Let’s see how she is.’ They all came trooping over to see me.

They found me in perfect health. God had healed me in the night – without even the help of the local missionary.