I never knew what God was going to do next or whom He was going to bring into my life. Brenda was one of the most beautiful children I have ever met. I found her at the main hospital in Jinja where my girls and I went a few times a week to pass out food to patients, pray for them, chat with them, and remind them of the love Jesus has for them. She was no ordinary girl. I would have guessed she, at the age of thirteen, weighed around forty pounds.
We met her on a Monday, lying limp in a rusty hospital bed, hardly able to breathe because of the pain she was in. Brenda had been to every government hospital in Uganda and no one had been able to say what was wrong, why her stomach kept ballooning as the rest of her body seemed to shrink. Not knowing what else to do, I immediately laid my hands on her and began to pray. Within minutes my six little girls were huddled around the bed also lifting their voices to the Lord on behalf of this little girl.
I could feel her body shaking beneath my hands as I prayed, and when I moved my hand off hers, I could see the outline of where I had touched her. My touch had made her blood come to the surface in the perfect shape of my handprint.
I returned to the hospital that evening with dinner for Brenda and her mother, who lay on the hospital floor next to her dying daughter. Overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness as soon as I walked in, I again began to pray, exalting God who was Lord in the middle of that room full of dying people, asking Him to heal where it was His will, to at least take away the pain, to wrap us all in His arms, to comfort us in the way that only He can until we come home to Him.
Over the next days, I continued visiting Brenda several times a day, taking her food or a blanket, praying for her, and simply being with her.
Although her baffled physicians had done nothing to help her, I went to see her one day and found her condition remarkably improved. The next day, she was alert and able to have a conversation with me, and her pain seemed much less severe. The next day she was sitting and laughing, her stomach much less distended.
I believe that Jesus told His disciples to heal the sick, and I believe that Jesus works through humans as we open ourselves to Him. I had never prayed with such conviction and faith as I did during those days with Brenda, though I pray with much fervency more frequently now. I by no means have the power to heal, but I know our Almighty Father does.
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." John 14:12
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