We have some good news to report! Our ministry partner in Honduras, a pediatric hospital called CURE Honduras, sent us the following story about a young boy named Junior, and it immediately touched my heart.
Junior was born with a severe case of clubfoot and never received treatment when he was young. Why? Because his mother abandoned him when he was a little boy and his father left him in the care of a grandmother. Sadly, his grandmother is very poor and elderly; in fact, she and Junior live in nothing but a small one-room shack built with pieces of zinc sheeting. It sounded like their “house” hardly protected them from the elements or provided any safety.
With his parents out of the picture and his grandmother barely able to feed him, Junior suffered through childhood without medical care and was unable to walk. He couldn’t go to school or play with his friends like a normal little boy. Having a younger brother myself, I know boys like to run around and be rambunctious, so for Junior to be unable to even walk, let alone run and play, seemed heartbreaking to me!
God’s providence led the Cross Catholic-supported CURE hospital to discover Junior when he was in his early teens. Since CURE is a Christian hospital, they have a spiritual director who counsels patients and encourages them in their faith. Junior told the spiritual director that he felt really bad because other boys made fun of him, beat him, and called him names. He was also extremely sad that his parents had abandoned him. This little boy had a lot of spiritual and emotional issues to work through.
Junior’s physical and spiritual healing started with the surgery he received from CURE to correct his club foot, which went incredibly well. “The improvement in his mobility has been amazing,” CURE wrote to us. The hospital also told us about Junior’s spiritual growth: “The spiritual director was talking with him about how much Jesus Christ loves him and he opened his heart to Jesus. With a new outlook on life, physically and spiritually, he said that he is going to start to study because he wants a good job.”
What a praise report for Christ!
-Stephanie J.
