Miracle Medical Insurance

By RC

Over the last six years of doing full-time missionary work, I’ve seen Jesus do amazing miracles to provide, guide, and protect me.

A friend asked me recently what my biggest leap of faith had been to date. It was hard to pick a certain moment, as I’ve come to see that every time Jesus presents a challenge and through faith I overcome, He “upgrades” me; the next challenge is a little harder and more faith is required. In that way my faith is always growing.

But there was one time that I can say was a definite turning point in my life of faith. I was 18 years old and on my way to Ethiopia with another missionary friend. Neither of us had been there before, I had never been to Africa period. So I felt rather uncertain. We landed in Frankfurt, Germany, and on arrival at the train station, we started talking to two people who turned out to be from Ethiopia. They introduced us to their churchand the locals there. We didn’t have any finances for the tickets, and the deadline for the flight was getting closer as the days passed.

For a couple of days prior I had been experiencing odd twinges in the right side of my stomach. The twinges quickly turned into sharp, stabbing pain, but up till that point I had never been really sick before and so I ignored it. Early one morning, the day before our departure, I woke up with a start; nothing had woken me, but something wasn’t right. I stood up and blacked out.

When I woke up a few minutes later, the pain was unimaginable. My friend had woken to me falling on the floor and wasn’t sure what the problem was. At the hospital, after hours of the doctors trying to figure out what was wrong, they discovered I had ovarian cysts and that two large ones had ruptured, causing internal bleeding.

The doctors explained that I would need an operation immediately, and to please give my insurance details. I didn’t have any. I was young, a new missionary, and honestly had never thought about insurance. One doctor got very upset and explained in detail that this operation could cost up to 15,000 euros and that it had to be paid. “What are you going to do?” When I started to hesitantly say that I believed God could do a miracle, he just laughed.

I was scared, and in the back of my mind was this voice saying, “This is a punishment for the things you’ve done wrong. If you really had faith, this wouldn’t have happened.” They wouldn’t let my friend in, so I lay there asking myself, “What will I do? What will I do?” An angel, in the form of a nurse, came in just then and said, “Don’t think about the money. You belong to God. If you can’t have faith in anything else, trust in His love.”

I decided to go ahead with the operation, and found out later that my friends who were doing projects throughout Europe and Africa were having hourly prayer vigil and were already seeing how they could pay for the operation. The days after the operation were rough. The rules would not allow my friend to visit much, but what was really eating at me was that I should have been in Ethiopia by then.

Just a few months prior I had dedicated my life to Jesus and serving Him, but before that I had been as far away from the life of faith as was possible. How the heck am I going to pay for the operation? Is this a punishment? Why did it happen?

During this time another lady was put in the same room as me, and I could hear her talking to her daughter, saying, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to face God’s punishments. What will happen to my family ... and why is God allowing this?” She was speaking in Turkish, and while I’m by no means fluent, I understood what she was saying.

I started to speak to her through her daughter, who spoke English. I told them about God’s love and how perfect it is. How God allows suffering so that we can better understand His love and grow closer to Him. I started to find the answers to the very same fears and doubts that I had been struggling with as I spoke to her.

She was dying of cancer of the intestines, and although they were going to try to operate, there was only a 30% chance of success. The day before I was released from the hospital, she called me over and said, “In the Koran, Jesus is called the Healer. I have heard you pray to Him. Please pray now for my life.” Her whole family was standing there with such expectant faith. I don’t remember the prayer or what I said, but I was so desperate for Jesus to do something and honor their faith.

The next day I was released and told to stay in bed and rest for two weeks. The only problem was that I had nowhere to go. I was issued a paper saying I had to report to the hospital with how I was going to pay the bill within a month’s period. I walked to the entrance of the hospital and sat down and started to pray.

About two hours later I heard my name being shouted. I turned around to see the daughter of the Turkish woman who had gone for the operation. “It’s a miracle! The miracle from God,” she was saying over and over. She explained that just before the operation the doctors decided to do one more scan. The cancer had wrapped itself all around her intestines. But the scan showed something completely different. All of the cancer was gone, except for a small bit right on top. The operation took very little time and she was fine. The doctors said they had never seen anything like it happen before—it was a miracle.

I stayed with that family for two weeks, and during that time each of them asked questions about God’s love and Jesus’ power to heal. During that time the father, mother, and daughter asked Jesus to come into their hearts and change their lives.

What happened to the miracle needed for the hospital bill? Well, on the second week, with shaking knees but a greater faith that Jesus would work it out, I went to the hospital, told them my name, and waited for the secretaries to call me. Finally one lady called me into the office. She looked at me with a confused look and then looked back at the file. Finally she asked me for my date of birth and birthplace. I told her, and she shook her head. For 40 long minutes she rattled on her keyboard, made calls, and got more and more angry and frustrated.

Finally she threw the file down and said, “Bah! There is no real record of your having even been here.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, as she continued, “There was a woman here with the same name as you, but according to our files she was 76 years old, had inflammation of the joints, and was covered by our medical insurance policy. We cannot charge you if there is no record of you even existing. You can go!”

I stumbled out of that office hardly believing that Jesus with His wonderful sense of humor had taken my medical file and replaced it with that of a 76-year-old lady. When I went back to the house of my friends and told them what had happened, the mother called the hospital to make sure. It was as the secretary had said: they couldn’t find a single trace of paperwork that I had ever been in the hospital. “And to us Germans, if it’s not on paper, then it hasn’t happened.”

Before that miracle, I had always thought that miracles came to those that were more spiritual, to someone who was very close to Jesus. During this time I didn’t feel very full of faith at all. In fact, I was at my lowest point—just struggling to trust that Jesus loved me.

Remembering this experience helps me so much when I’m facing impossible situations and feel like I don’t have what it takes to receive a miracle. Since then the miracles I’ve experienced have always happened when I stopped trying to use my “common sense” and simply told Jesus I needed Him and Him alone, and then immediately followed whatever He said.