Jungle Miracle, Part 2: Adult Mission Story for June 28, 2025

By Andrew McChesney

Last week: Armi, a missionary teaching children at a jungle mission school in Papua, Indonesia, made an eight-hour trek up a mountain to visit a single mother who hadn’t walked after falling out of a tree seven years earlier. He and a missionary friend told the mother that her only hope was in Jesus, the Master Physician. Then Armi and his friend prayed for a cell-phone signal. They desperately needed medical advice on how to treat the mother’s leg. But they were in the middle of a mountainous jungle and hadn’t received a cell-phone signal in months.

Then a miracle happened. Just a few days after visiting the mother, Armi’s phone rang while he and his friend were visiting another far-off place in Papua, Indonesia. At first, Armi thought it was his phone alarm and ignored it. But the phone kept ringing, so he pulled it out of his pocket and saw that he had received an email. That meant that he had a cell-phone connection.

Armi immediately bowed his head and prayed, “Lord, thank You, thank You! Please help me to call the right person for information on how to treat this mother.”

Armi quickly scrolled through his phone contacts, worried that the cell-phone signal might disappear. Then he found a friend who was a nurse, and he called her.

The call went through!

Armi described the situation, and the nurse offered advice on how to clean the wound on the mother’s right knee. She also suggested that Armi take anti-infection antibiotics that he had in his mountain home and give the pills to the mother.

The phone call lasted only two minutes. Then the signal disappeared. But it was enough time to receive the precious advice.

For the next two months, Armi and his friend visited the mother in her grass hut every week. Every time, they cleaned the wound and gave her antibiotics against the infection that had caused her knee to swell. They urged her to pray regularly.

“Who should I pray to?” she asked the first time.

“Pray to the One whose name is Jesus,” Armi replied.

She was not familiar with Jesus, and Armi introduced her to Him through Bible stories. As he cleaned her wound, he spoke about how Jesus had healed the sick and gave sight to the blind. Neighbors came to watch, and they listened to the stories.

As the weeks passed, the swelling slowly went down and the wound healed. Armi and his friend gave thanks to God. Everything that was happening was beyond their medical skills.

Then the two missionaries had commitments in other parts of Papua and weren’t able to visit the mother for a month. But they sent healthy food and natural remedies to her with the assistance of the children whom they were teaching at the jungle mission school.

When the missionaries finally managed to hike the eight hours to her village again, they found her standing outside her grass hut. Armi started to cry. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The mother who hadn’t been able to walk for seven years was standing with the aid of a walking stick outside her hut. As he and his friend drew closer, she used the walking stick to take halting steps toward them.

Then Armi’s friend began to cry. “How can this be?” he said.

The three sat down inside the hut. The mother’s face shone with joy and health as she spoke. “I kept praying, and the pain went away,” she said, using hand gestures to help them understand her dialect. “I believe that it’s because of Jesus. Even though I don’t understand who He is, I’m grateful that you have brought Him into my life.”

“This is not the end,” Armi replied. “If you believe that Jesus has healed you, you must continue to believe and obey Him.”

Another month passed, and the mother was able to walk without the walking stick. She wasn’t completely healed, but she could resume her normal activities at home and in the field where she grew crops.

The neighbors were astounded. They began to pray to Jesus with her.

Shortly before Armi finished his time as a missionary in Papua, he met with the mother one last time. She confided that she no longer felt at peace with her traditional way of worship.

“May I join your worship?” she asked.

“You’re very welcome, Mom,” Armi replied. “But our church is so far away. How will you be able to walk eight hours?”

“Jesus is the One who healed me,” she said. “I have to worship Him. He has helped me to walk again, and I will walk to church to worship Him.”

The mother made the long walk, and she attended worship services every Sabbath after that. She also sent all four of her children to the jungle mission school.

To Armi’s surprise, not only did her children come to the school but so did all the other children from her village. The neighbors had witnessed the power of Jesus, and they wanted their children to know Him, too. “Things that are impossible for me are not impossible for God,” Armi said. “I pray that the mother will remain faithful.”

Part of today’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will go to Papua to help construct classrooms, an administrative building, a library, and an auditorium for Papua Adventist Theology College. The college moved to Nabire after its campus was destroyed in a flood in another part of Papua in 2019. Currently, students meet in borrowed classrooms from an Adventist academy. Today’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering also will support two projects in Myanmar — a preschool and a center of influence — and a health clinic in Brunei. Thank you for your generous offering