Inside Story: Columbia ~ Unexplainable Hospital Visit

Unexplainable Hospital Visit

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

Hernando Díaz stepped out of the hospital to rest in Medellin, Colombia. He had spent the past two hours with his young son, Samuel, as the boy’s blood was cleaned by a dialysis machine with an artificial kidney. His wife, Monica, was now sitting with the boy for the last two hours of hemodialysis.

Image © Pacific Press

Hernando collapsed onto a bench near a water fountain, and he turned on a sermon on his cellphone. Moments later, a stranger walked up and asked whether he could sit on the bench. Hernando nodded, listening to the sermon over the cell phone speaker. The stranger’s own cellphone rang.

“I’ve decided to kill myself,” the stranger angrily told the caller. “I haven’t been able to find work for two years, and I don’t want to live. Don’t call me.”

As he spoke, he seemed to forget Hernando on the bench. But when he hung up, he came back to reality. The sermon caught his attention.

“Is that a Christian preacher?” he asked.

“Yes, he is,” Hernando said. “I heard that you want to take your life.”

“Yes, that is what I want to do,” the man said. “I cannot bear it anymore.”

“I don’t think that it is a coincidence that you sat with me,” Hernando said. “You need help. Would you like help?”

“Yes, I would like help.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an accountant, and I have a family that I can’t support.”

“If someone told you, “I can help you and supply your needs and give you hope for a better future,’ would you accept it?”

“Of course!”

Hernando spoke about Jesus, and the man gave his heart to Jesus on the spot. Hernando encouraged him to send out his resume with faith. The next day, Hernando sat on the same bench and saw the man looking for him.

“Guess what!” the man said. “Someone called with a job offer. I feel great!”

Hernando praised God and curiously asked who he had visited at the hospital the previous day. The man said he didn’t know anyone at the hospital. “Yesterday I felt an irresistible urge to come to the hospital,” he said. “I sat next to you because I didn’t know what to do.”

Hernando, a Seventh-day Adventist physician at the Adventist Medical Center on the campus of Colombia Adventist University in Medellin, has many similar stories. Over the past five years, more than 100 people have changed their minds about committing suicide after praying with him.

“They now are living normal lives,” he said.