More of the Story

More of the Story: Isabete Conceiçao
January 23, 2012 – NMI Prayer Mobilization Line

 

Missionaries Phil and Martha Patalano write:

Thank you for remembering Isabete Conceiçao in prayer. She is in her thirties with a mitral valve heart problem. Her husband Jorge is the pastor of our "Nova Obra" congregation in Malanza (southern part of the Sao Tome Island). Please continue to pray for her.

God has been answering prayer while she is waiting for the medical specialist to arrive February 17th. Isabete was allowed to go home from the hospital after three weeks just last Wednesday. She still feels fatigued but is doing all right so far.

Her situation has been reminding me of another heart patient we knew of when we were pastoring in Bermuda (late 1990s). There was a well-known local writer in desperate need of a heart transplant. Our church members had been following his situation and we decided to pray for him as a congregation. I do not remember his name today. I never met him nor read any of his writings..

Before we started to pray, I told our people that I felt we could not pray directly for God to provide a heart for him because that would mean we were asking for someone else to die in his place so this writer could have his/her heart. We decided to pray specifically that God would:
• Keep this writer alive until a suitable heart was available
• Bring evangelical Christians into his life while he was there at John Hopkins in
  the United States (to witness to him and lead him to Jesus-we were under the
  impression that he was not born-again).

The days slowly turned into weeks and the weeks dragged into months. We prayed for him by name every Sunday in our morning prayer time and during the week through our prayer list ministry. After a while we became amazed at how God was keeping him alive and were grateful that He was answering prayer.

We were all very happy when we heard that a suitable heart had finally become
available. The surgery was performed right away. God answered our prayer as a church and kept him alive all that time.

This was one of the many answers to prayer that encouraged us in the Bermuda Church in those days.

Isabete does not need a heart transplant but has a mitral valve problem that needs serious attention. The medical specialist will be on the island around February 17th and will make the determination whether or not she will go to a hospital in Portugal for mitral valve surgery on her heart.

Please continue to pray that
• Isabete will receive the medical attention she needs-God will heal her heart valve
• She will have her many productive years in God's service with her husband,
  Pastor Jorge.

 

You can read more about the ministry of missionaries Phil and Martha Patalano in a recent Engage Magazine article. Click here to go to the article.

  

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