At the worship service last night a young girl, 14, who was sent here with her two babies having been impregnated by her father sang to open the service. She sang “Nothing is too difficult for God”. Recently she had said to me “Papi, I am a little girl. I want to be a little girl.” She asked to be placed in the general population and her children would stay in the baby dorm. I want her to be a little girl. We will teach her in the years to come how to be a mother.”

As we were singing, little Marjorie, dialysis, came and took my hand and we worshipped together.

Susie fell off a ladder & struck the ground, no concrete, but Billy took her to the hospital for an exam. After the test Aroldo emailed in English “She has nothing in her head”. So she came home.

The first was we cope with the death of a loved one is HOPE. Now if you are going to have hope at the end of your life is to have Jesus in your heart. To accept Christ as Lord and Savior is absolutely necessary if we are to see a loved one again.

Second, we saw that MEMORIES are another way we cope. I gave you a number of examples but I need to ask you “What kind of memories are you creating with those you love?”

Third, I also shared the next way to cope is through the LOVE OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Do you have any? These relationships take time to develop. I have attended funerals where people did not even like each other. My goodness how sad it is to sit in a room with someone in a coffin and those around you are not even speaking to one another.

Now we will see the forth way to cope. The WORD OF GOD! I want to give you a personal example. I was teaching the Word in a Bible school down South. I considered myself a “Faith” teacher. I taught over and over (correctly) that God forgave our sins on the cross and He also healed our bodies.  Psalms 103:3 “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases.”

Dottie and I had already buried two children with heart disease and our third one had exactly the same disease. But I was determined to stand on Psalms 103:3 but despite my little faith and my absolute assurance in God’s Word my child died. To make it worse the local newspaper ran a cruel and heartless article ridiculing me.

My heart was crushed first by many child’s death and second by Dottie’s broken heart. The article in the paper was Satan simply kicking me in the gut while I was down. After the funeral Dottie and I drove to Houston for a few days to recover. We put life jackets on Tony and Chad and put them in the swimming pool while we each sat on separate beds and tried to read the Word and pray.

Every page I read seemed to be blank. I felt as though God had nothing to say to me. I was a failure! I could never preach or teach again! Just like peter when he decided to return to the profession of fishing following his denial of Jesus I was certain that I was going to return to working with the mentally handicapped.

I flipped through the Word and suddenly as I was reading Micah I arrived at chapter 7. God screamed this passage to me. Micah 7:8 “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.”

God was saying that Satan was laughing but if I would arise and be faithful I would no more be in darkness. I jumped on the bed with Dottie–read it to her–we laughed and rejoiced that our Father was still by our sides. The rest is history!