When I first met Cato, a man I would estimate to be in his early to mid-thirties, he came to
us for wound care while working in the village, barely able to walk. I do not know what was worse, the smell of his
injuries or the smell of the local home brew alcohol they make in the village on
his breath. He was a broken man with
horrific injuries on both of his lower legs.
We were fortunate enough to have a team visiting that had 3 nurses on
it. They were able to help me clean,
dress and bandage the wounds. It took over 30 minutes to clean his wounds so I
began to talk to him, to ask him about his life. He told me he was the last one left in his
family and that he had come back to the village to die. He had no hope. His wounds were so bad and so painful. What he told me next, chilled me to my
core. Cato said “The pain is so bad you
should cut off my leg or cut of my head, I don’t care which.” He was in a dark place. Do you know what we did? We prayed for Cato.
I believe the underlying problem
is that Cato is diabetic. How do you
treat that in the village? He can’t get
a steady supply of medicine to treat it and he can’t change his diet, what they
grow in the village they eat. There is
no “special diet” in the village.
Each time we went to the village,
we walked down to Cato’s house to pray for him and to treat his wounds.
Slowly,
slowly the wounds started to heal.
Slowly, slowly Cato started to heal.
There was a small amount of hope with our increasing visits. As he was able to, Cato started walking up to
where we work in the village. One of
Cato’s major problems was that he kept the wounds covered for days at a
time. He liked to keep them covered so
that he could walk to the local bar and drink the local alcohol. Staying
covered for so long and the continuous intake of alcohol was not helping at all
in the healing process.
After a couple months of working
with Cato, talking about discipleship with him, treating his wounds and showing him love, Cato did
something amazing. He asked for a Bible!
At first, we were very wary of him asking because everyone seems to want
a gift from the muzungo. However, this
seemed real; this seemed like a genuine request and outreach for help. I told
Cato I would look into a Bible for him in his language.
A couple weeks went by and Cato
kept coming. During our children’s
outreach ministry Cato was sitting right in middle of all the kids listening to
the stories from the Children’s Bible. The interest and intrigue were
there. I also noticed the smell of
alcohol was almost gone from Cato. One
day he brought me pieces of a Bible he had gotten his hands on to start reading. To say it was falling apart is an
understatement. I do not even think all
of it was there and there were all kinds of pages missing. This man went from
hoping to die, to reading literally bits and pieces of the Bible.
On our next visit I presented
Cato with a brand new Bible in his native language of Luganda. The exciting part is I don’t just call him
Cato anymore, I call him Brother. Cato
accepted Christ! We rejoiced together
and I can only imagine the rejoicing in Heaven.
Luke 15:10
“…there is rejoicing in the
presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
It is amazing to see God take a
man that was broken and hopeless and to build him up into a believer. It is exciting to see the work God is doing
in Uganda. Cato’s leg still has healing
to do, Cato still has healing to do, but he has literally been raised up to
walk as a new man.
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| Walking a way a new man |
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