Vietnam: Hospital worker leads 50 to Christ in two days

Girl born with bent feet healed by Jesus —

By Mark Ellis —

Born with bent feet, at two-years-old, Mai could not even stand. Doctors in Ho Chi Minh City had been unable to help the baby.

Despairing over her condition, the parents decided to receive prayer from a Christian pastor, along with five other Hmong pastors who were attending a training, according to a report by Christian Aid Mission (CAM).

“The next day, while the husband, his wife and their daughter were at a children’s hospital waiting for their appointment, for the first time in Mai’s life she was able to walk about one meter with the help of her parents,” the pastor reported.

The parents were so elated at this first glimpse of hope that they cancelled the doctor’s appointment and carried little Mai back to the pastor and asked for more prayer.

After the prayer, Mai was able to walk from one end of a bed to the other, supporting herself with one hand on a wall. Her parents asked the pastors attending the training session to pray for her one more time before they began the long trip back to their home in Dak Lak Province.

Two days later, they informed the pastor that Mai was 70 percent healed.

“Not long after that, Mai was able to stand, walk and run like a normal child,” the pastor told CAM. “Hallelujah! This is a great miracle, that God healed a girl with a birth defect in her feet.”

News about the healing spread and helped to fuel new growth in the church in southern Dak Lak province.

The indigenous ministry leader’s wife began to share the gospel with patients in cancer treatment hospitals. She found that patients who respond to the gospel are more open to receiving prayer for healing, according to CAM.

“In Hanoi there are four cancer hospitals, and the ministry had one worker there who in two days saw 50 people receive Christ,” CAM’s ministry director reported. “The people are typically in the hospital for two weeks, and the ministry workers try to follow up with them afterwards.”

“Typically the patients’ families spend most of their time in the hospital to help care for them, so they too hear the

gospel,” he said. Conditions are so meager at the hospitals that there are often two patients per bed, as well as two patients under each bed, he noted.

“The hallways are filled with people, everything is dirty, and the family has to provide their food,” he said. “In Ho Chi Minh City there are two cancer hospitals, but they are now building a very large one.”

The ministry director would like to find supporters to pray for and support two evangelists working in the cancer treatment hospitals.

Workers provide memory sticks that contain the Bible and other training materials in the Vietnamese and Khmer languages for those who accept Christ.

“Typically the tribal mountain people have been open to the gospel, but the Vietnamese people in the lowlands and the cities have been resistant,” he said. “In the hospitals, 30 percent of people are tribal and 70 percent are Vietnamese. The ministry is excited, because this is a way of reaching both the ethnic groups and the Vietnamese with the gospel.”

One area that has been particularly resistant to the gospel is Vinh City, on Vietnam’s north central coast. Tragically, one pastor was killed there last year when a car veered into him.

The ministry leader went to console the grieving congregation. “He asked for a replacement and 30 men volunteered, even though it is a very hard place to minister,” he said. “Now there are 12 other churches in the area.”

Non-Christian relatives of the church members were angry, saying, “If God is a big God, why would He allow this to happen?” One answer came when the mother of the driver who struck the pastor, surprised there was no lawsuit and the congregation forgave her son, decided to visit the church.

“She saw the love of the people towards her, and so she believed in Christ,” the ministry director reported.”

To learn more about Christian Aid Mission’s work in Vietnam, go here