A family of farmers, they had just a simple farmer’s vehicle to carry her in. They put their mother on the back and traveled about twenty-five miles. The trip lasted almost six hours before they reached the hospital. As soon as the doctor started examining this woman, they decided to open her and see what was wrong. They saw that there was something terribly wrong in her body. When they opened her, they saw that this woman was filled with cancer. There was nothing to do. They found out that her heart was three times bigger than a normal heart. All these different diseases were in her body. The doctors told the woman, “You are going to die within three days. Go back home to die.”

This woman had never heard the name of Jesus. This is very difficult for us to understand in our Western world. There are still billions of people on this earth who have never heard the Gospel one time. She was one of those people. She was fifty years old. She was born just a few years before the Revolution. She was raised in a Communist home. She had never heard about Jesus. As her death sentence was pronounced, “Three days and you are going to die,” she started to cry. There was a tremendous pain in her body. They moved her out from the doctor’s room to the corridor of the hospital. And there, she was waiting for her son to come and pick her up and bring her back home to die.

As the woman was crying there silently and hopelessly, one of the nurses in that hospital who was a secret believer of Jesus, noticed her. The nurse was one of His disciples. She risked everything by reaching out to this dying lady. She knew that if someone knew what she was going to do, she would lose her work. She would lose everything and the authorities would throw her into prison. Nevertheless, she decided she had to give something to the woman that she could hope in. She rushed to her home, the dormitory of the hospital, and she picked up a little booklet. It was the book of Mark. She put that little booklet in the hands of this crying woman, and said to her, “Woman, when you go back home, ask your son to read to you from this book. This book is your only hope.”

It took an additional six hours for them to go back home. The whole family was waiting. Seventeen people were there in the room. The oldest son carried the mother into the room. She was lying on a straw mattress on the floor. The son said, “Mother is going to die very soon. There was nothing the doctors could do.” Everybody started to cry as they were looking at their mother. She was in such pain and half unconscious from the six hours ride on the back of a farmer’s vehicle. While everyone was sad and crying, they suddenly heard their mother say to her son, “Son, take this book which is between my fingers. Read to me from it.”

The son replied, “Mother, now is no time to read. You have to rest. You are just about to die.” But the mother said with a very firm voice, “Son, my only hope is in this book.”

The son took this little book—he didn’t know what it was—and he opened the first page. He started to read, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Suddenly, something happened when these words went into the body of this woman. The power of the Holy Ghost came upon her. Seventeen people saw her hands, which had been crippled for twenty years, straighten out before their eyes. Within a few minutes, this woman stood up. She was completely healed and restored. She spoke out with joy, “It was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who did this to me.” Seventeen people saw this. They all kneeled down and said, “This Jesus is the Lord.” They were all saved in a wonderful way. The whole night, they only had this little booklet, but they kept reading about this Jesus and what He is able to do. Everybody was rejoicing about the gospel of Jesus Christ.