Volunteer in Action (VIA) Nancy Manigu, who works with other VIAs Fabian Herman and Micah David, shared this report about student Magdalene Waine.
Magdalene was in grade nine at Kusambuk Technical High School in 2019 when she began to have various sicknesses in her body. As a young student, she did not understand the cause of those sicknesses, but they severely affected her life and studies in school.
Magdalene’s family did their best to bring traditional herbal medics, but all were unsuccessful in relieving her diseases. More ailments arose in her life and as she grew worse the family had to leave her on a bed to die.
Thinking that God would heal her diseases, a few mothers from a Sunday church visited her several times and prayed and invited her to attend their church, but she refused to accept their invitation. After this a community health worker attended to her problem, wrote a disease referral report and said she should be taken to hospital in Wewak town for proper checks and treatment.
The hospital doctor discovered that Magdalene had a number of ailments to be treated so she was admitted for 12 months for closer examination and to hopefully cure her. The doctor had identified multiple, painful body sores which meant that she could not wear some clothes, sleep well or sit down comfortably. She had irregular monthly cycles and other swelling and pain in parts of her body.
The doctor put Magdalene on several six-hourly treatments but after a full year in hospital she felt that no medicine was going to heal her.
On one occasion, while in her hospital bed, a Bible text came to Magdalene’s mind. It was Jeremiah 29:11 and she recalled it as Jesus saying, “I know I have a better plan for you, not to harm you but to give you good success in the future.” Magdalene had attended Seventh-day Adventist church worships as a teenager when her father got baptised but he later left the Church. Maybe she had heard a pastor share this text in a sermon at church.
Magdalene prayed in hospital, “Dear Lord Jesus, if this promise in Jeremiah is true, I want to claim it as my own, heal my diseases. I want to follow you. No medication in hospital can cure all my sicknesses.”
After this simple, short prayer to Jesus she felt a healing touch and was able to leave the hospital soon after. During PNG for Christ at the Sifonduo site in East Yangoru, Magdalene was baptised and today she regularly attends church. A copy of a World Changer Bible was given to her by the VIA coordinator of Sepik Mission at the church where she goes to worship the all-powerful, undefeated God. She likes to share with others what God has done and is doing in her personal life.
Wilfred Manigu is the VIA coordinator at Sepik Mission in PNG.
