A Story from a Missonary Nurse

This is just part of an e-mail that my mother sent me a day our two ago. She is working with our mission's clinic in Honduras, and always has quite the stories to tell.


..."His is one of the many sad cases that arrive at our door as a consequence of sin. But in a land where grudges and arguments are resolved with slashing machetes, some of those involved don’t make it here in time to do them any good. Hopefully, that wasn’t the case with the man who was wheeled in on the Red Cross ambulance stretcher not long ago. It was only my second time in six summers of working here that the ambulance had ever brought me a patient, as opposed to the usual taking them from here to a larger facility. As soon as I got a good look at him, I knew we’d just be stabilizing him, and the ambulance crew would wait to take him on. At least, I hoped we could get him stable enough to leave, and not have him die on our treatment table. He was, without question, the most desperately wounded person I have ever seen. The stretcher was completely covered with a sheet of clear plastic, the size and thickness of a large tablecloth. Someone on either side held up the edges of the plastic so the copious amount of pooled blood would not pour off onto the floor, as yet a third person carefully guided the stretcher with its gruesome burden down the hall.



The wounded man was praying loudly and brandishing his Bible aloft in his right hand. His left arm lay inert and helpless beside him, grit and splintered fragments of bone mixed with the mangled flesh of a nearly severed forearm. The ambulance attendants and I lifted him with infinite care onto the table, and with shaking hands I inserted a large bore, #18 IV catheter into his right arm and started a liter of fluids infusing wide open to replace the lost blood. “Tell me what happened,” I questioned while assessing his other wounds: a deep, 2 ½ inch long gouge on the right side of his neck that narrowly missed his jugular vein and another, longer one on his right upper back. I worked to dress and bandage his wounds while listening, horrified, to his story.



During his walk down the mountain on the main dirt road leading to town, he had chanced upon a stranger, and began witnessing to him of Jesus. The fellow listened with mounting fury, which was unnoticed by the gentleman intent on evangelism. That is, he didn’t notice his companion’s agitation until the stranger suddenly jerked his machete from his belt, screaming, “Well, let’s see if your God can save YOU,” and took a frenzied swing at the guy’s head, intending to sever it from his body. His victim reflexively threw up his arm to ward off the attack, catching diagonally across his elbow and the length of his forearm a blow of sufficient force to have rolled his head into the dirt. His upper and both lower arm bones were all three shattered, and half of his forearm sliced away. Thankfully only the tip of the machete reached its intended goal, leaving the gouge on his neck. A second wild chop whistled down across the man’s shoulder and upper back before his attacker fled.



By the time I’d heard his story and his wounds had been dressed, the man was silent and pale, drifting in and out of consciousness. I started a second bag of IV fluids and prayed aloud for God’s healing touch, and for safety in the journey. We loaded him carefully onto the ambulance once more, and the driver revved his motor, heading out with his fragile cargo. Tragic indeed! Yet what comfort the viciously brutalized man had in the midst of his agony – the promise of a loving heavenly Father to go with him even through “the valley of the shadow of death.” Whether he crosses that valley now or not, he has the hope of an eternity in heaven. How much better than the end awaiting his would-be murderer, who hates so intensely a God who loves him so dearly that He died to save him."