Two lives

Edmund after his operation in the recovery room

Some people can divide their lives in a “beforehand” and an “afterwards”.  The reason for this is often a personal tragedy, e.g. a sudden accident or a severe illness. Would Edmund describe his life in this way?

The young Curahuasino, Edmund, is 19 years old, comes from humble conditions, successfully taught himself German and is friends with some of the missionaries’ children.  Until a short while ago he was healthy and cheerful and had set his sights on climbing up the social ladder through his own personal initiative.  But our lives do not always run as straight and smoothly as we hope.  We encounter several setbacks and failures on the way and it seems that “fate” strikes out of the blue.

A couple of days ago Edmund came to the Hospital Diospi Suyana suffering from acute pain: an ureteral calculus had increased the pressure is his kidney so much that the organ burst.  On Monday Dr Brady carried out an emergency operation in which he also introduced a catheter into the ureter.

Lying in the recovery room Edmund can smile again.  To take his mind off things Dr Malisi lent him Samuel Koch’s book “Two lives”, which tells the story of a young man who on 4th December 2010, while performing in the German TV-programme “Wetten-dass” (in which people state that they will successfully do xyz and the audience and the moderating team bet whether they will succeed or not), crashed onto his neck and has suffered from quadriplegia since.

The website “evangelisch.de” reports: “When trying to jump over cars that were coming towards him, Samuel Koch, who had spiral springs attached to his feet, a bet-candidate of Thomas Gottschalk, suffered such severe injuries that he is now paralysed from his shoulders down.  Such an accident would have caused some people to be flooded with bitterness and lose their faith in God, but not so the former gymnast.  Since that fateful accident in December 2010 the now 24 year-old has repeatedly emphasized his faith in God – even during the many excruciatingly hard moments.  “I remember thinking:  ‘God where are you?  When will this nightmare end?  When will I finally be with you in heaven?’” he writes in his book “Two lives” (Zwei Leben).”

We hope that Edmund will recover quickly from his operation, but more importantly we pray that he experiences that God is always at his side and carries him especially through the dark hours of his life.  We can never fall deeper than into the loving hand of God.  And together with Samuel Koch we yearn for the place where tears, illnesses and suffering will be a thing of the past: in the Presence of Almighty God.

 

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