The Shiloh Family (minus Francis who stayed home to guard Shiloh) went to visit dear friends of ours.  The wife had given birth to an adorable baby girl just two weeks prior.  In fact the man was at Shiloh on retreat when she phoned to say labor had started.  We brought a gift of lovely baby cloths that the U.S. team had brought out with them last July.  While we took turns holding this precious little girl who is so blessed to have been born into a godly Cameroonian family, we sat spellbound, listening to the following story.

When our friend went to a local church run hospital to confirm that she was indeed expecting their third child, the doctor ordered a battery of tests.  It had been four years since she had delivered her last child at the same hospital. She was frankly overwhelmed with how many more tests they were requiring now days.  As she stood outside the examination room wondering where all the money for these tests was coming from, a nurse approached her.  The nurse very kindly asked if she could help.  When she learned the financial dilemma our friend was in, the nurse knew a solution.  She said she would be able to reduce the price for her.  Our friend was grateful.  And so it was that  our friend gave her the money and the nurse proceeded to do the lab work herself. 

Upon returning home and sharing this news with her husband, he wanted to see the receipt the hospital had given his wife.  It was then that they realized there was no receipt and therefore this was a scam.  In other words, the money landed in the nurses pocket.  The following day when our friend returned for her lab results and another consultation with her doctor, she went directly to the nurse and asked for the receipt.  The nurse explained that in cases like this the hospital does not issue a receipt. Our friend informed her that in cases like this the nurse was obviously stealing from the hospital, and as a Christian, she wanted nothing to do with this kind of behavior. She handed the nurse the balance due for the medical exams and told her to put it with the money from yesterday, take it to the finance office, and come back with her receipt. The nurse reported that she was also a Christian, and that this is how they do things at the hospital.

“What kind of a Christian are you?” our friend asked. “You are stealing from your employer. Is this what Christians are supposed to do?”

The nurse was embarrassed to have gotten caught, but began justifying her behavior. She told how her husband had lost his job, how they were struggling with only her income, how she had to engage in this practice to make ends meet at home.

“You don’t know this,” our friend replied, “but my husband and I are close personal friends with the doctor. As soon as I finish talking with you, I am going into his office. If I decide to tell him what you are doing, I cannot promise you what will happen, but there is a good chance you will loose you job. Do you want to get fired? Then both you and your husband will be out of work. Is that what you want?”

Tears began to flow as the nurse begged her not to report her. She promised to meet our friend at the finance office tomorrow with the stolen money and would get the receipt for her. Our friend agreed to this.

Unbeknown to her, the nurse took the rest of the day off, pleading sickness. She fell on her knees in her bedroom and in tears spent a long time confessing the dreadfulness of her sin to our Lord and Savior. When her husband returned to the house that evening, she confessed everything to him. Not only was he not unemployed, he just happened to be a well known pastor of a large church here in town. Turns out this nurse had been sealing from her employer for a very long time. It had started small one day when she “really needed” extra money for something. As with all sin, it very quickly grew into a routine habit. Her husband would notice her coming home with a new pair of shoes, a new dress, or a new purse, when it wasn’t pay day. He would ask where the money came from, but she had a plausible answer for him.

“You know dear, how I’ve told you that sometimes we treat rich patients at the hospital, and how sometimes they appreciate our work so much that they give us money. Today we treated an elderly man and he gave me 10.000 F as a thank you, so I bought this new purse.”

Her husband always fell for this lie, and so she sank further and further into her new lifestyle. Until the day Almighty God sent our friend along to catch her in her sin and confront her with it. You can be sure it was a very tearful and humiliating ordeal that she went through as she confessed every detail of her sin to her pastor husband. By God’s grace alone he quickly forgave her, but told her she would have to confess this to his superior. Amazingly, this dear nurse, who truly is God’s child (her actions prove that to us beyond all doubt) chose to obey her husband.

She experienced even deeper levels of humiliation as she confessed all to the pastor who is her husband’s boss. And she experienced the healing balm of God’s mercy as this pastor also forgave her. He prayed for her and then told her she should confess her sin once again to God in prayer in front of him. She left his office feeling cleansed and pure; a feeling she had not felt in a very long time.

Every single time our friend returned for her next prenatal visit, this nurse would thank her over and over again, from the bottom of her heart, for rescuing her from the awful trap she had gotten herself into. And then the day came when the nurse arrived at work and discovered that our friend had just delivered the baby. She went straight to the recovery room to see our friend. She new their visits were coming to an end. She could not thank our friend enough for confronting sin when she saw it.

“I could so easily have gotten caught, lost my job, and ended up in prison, if it hadn’t been for you.”

Wow! What a story! What an Amazing God we serve! He is ever ready to forgive us of our sins and to bring us back into His loving arms.