A Tree Tragedy Saves a Soul

“Don’t bring him downriver,” a village woman warned. “He’ll die on the way!”

Forty-eight-year-old Celestino and his friend had been hunting monkeys. When they saw that one of their prey had scurried up a tree, they gave the tree a few hard raps to shake the monkey down. To their amazement, the large tree crashed to the ground, breaking from a point about ten feet up the trunk.

The tree fell toward Celestino, nearly crushing his leg and pinning him to the ground. Then the tree dragged him beneath it as it slid downhill. It would have cut all the way through Celestino’s leg if his rifle hadn’t been in the way. The gun took the brunt of the weight of the tree and probably saved his life.

Celestino and his community were constantly aware of spiritual forces around them. He had searched for years to gain a power greater than his own. The Cofan people believe in a complex, traditional religious structure. Celestino was studying under his uncle to become a shaman (witchdoctor), and felt that this accident was a spiritual attack.

Large doses of penicillin helped his leg at first, but then the skin above the wound died and peeled away, exposing the muscle. Infection now blazed inside the wound. Now Celestino’s friends saw that his only hope was to leave his remote Cofan community on the Ecuador-Colombia border in search of better medical care.

His friends brought him out of the village in search of help, eventually coming to Hospital Vozandes-Quito. Celestino had never seen an automobile or an airplane. Everything was so new-even the meals that the hospital staff brought to his room each day were strange to him.

Chaplain Jorge Rea befriended Celestino and faithfully visited him in his room. As doctors treated the infection in his leg and prepared him for skin graft surgery, Jorge opened a new spiritual world for Celestino. He used a colorful story Bible to illustrate God’s truth, starting from the creation of the world. Celestino knew little of Christianity and listened intently.

“Would you like to know for sure that you’re going to heaven when you die?” asked the pastor. “You need to believe that Jesus died to save you. You need to accept Him into your life.”

Celestino agreed that he wanted eternal life, and he prayed with the chaplain. Each day brought new knowledge as he listened to Jorge.

“I’m teaching you,” Jorge said, “so that you can learn these things well and then you can go back and teach your people.”

Celestino soon went home, promising to use what he had learned and to teach it to others.

We praise God that He uses medical care to help us reach the remotest of all places and peoples!

Pray that Celestino would grow in knowledge of the true, all-powerful God and experience a truly blessed spiritual life.