by Ted Watts – Surgeon and Missionary Team Leader at the Good News Hospital
Mangoes
At the moment, it is mango season in Mandritsara. The mango trees are heavy with fruit. The ground beneath them is covered with fallen mangoes, some already rotting, swarmed over by wasps. The fruit is everywhere. It is obvious. You can see it.
But not all fruit is like that. Some fruit is hidden. Some takes a long time to appear. And sometimes we do not know whether there is any fruit at all.
A year or so ago, a man came to our hospital. We cannot remember his name, but his name is not important for this story. He stayed with us for many weeks with a complicated problem called an empyema – pus in the chest. We put in a drain, and it drained for weeks and weeks. Sometimes it would stop for a few days, and then it would start again. The man became discouraged and one day said, “Why doesn’t it just stop forever?”
Marco operating (centre)
My surgical colleague, Dr Marco, replied, “It is like the Mangarahara (our local river). Sometimes it dries up, but sometimes it comes back into flow.”
Mangarahara River in flood
Mangarahara River almost dried up
Eventually, the man recovered and was discharged.
A few weeks ago, Dr Marco was at a church meeting in Mandritsara when someone tapped him on the back. “Do you recognise me?” the man asked. Dr Marco looked at him. “Your face is familiar, but I can’t remember who you are.”
“Doctor,” he said, “you are the one who told me that sometimes the Mangarahara dries up, and sometimes it comes back into flow.” “Ah,” said Dr Marco, “now I remember you.” The man continued, “Some time after I left the hospital, after all that I heard there about the gospel, I gave my life to Christ. And now, in my village, my whole family has come to Christ as well.”
A village in the Mandritsara district
We praise God for fruit that we did not see at the time, fruit that is now visible and already being passed on to others.
Hospital staff preaching the gospel to outpatients
Dr Marco
We praise God for the many people He chose to use in this man’s life: doctors, nurses, evangelists; the preaching of God’s word on the ward each morning; prayers with the patient; acts of kindness, gentle words, and quiet compassion.
We praise God that the gospel is now going out from this man to others, and we pray that his family will be the first of many in their village to come to know the Lord Jesus.
Pray for village people like these